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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with self‑raising flour, dripping, lard, milk, sultanas, almonds, butter, eggs, sugar, cherries, orange peel, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the self-raising flour, dripping, lard, milk, sultanas, chopped almonds, butter, eggs, sugar, crystallized cherries, orange peel, and lemon peel until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into one large cake tin or two moderate-sized tins.

Bake

  1. Blanch the almonds, cut each into 3 pieces lengthwise, and place them on top of the cake.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for 2 to 2½ hours for a large cake, or 1½ hours for smaller cakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Self-raising flour
Provides the starch and raising agent that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and moisture through the cake as they plump during baking.

The step that matters

Baking time for the large cake. A heavy, fruit-filled batter heats slowly, and its centre sets last. Baking for the full 2 to 2½ hours lets the middle cook through, while underbaking leaves it gummy.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, almond, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, almond, egg, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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