Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, buttermilk, flour, spices, raisins, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the buttermilk.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Make and bake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing well.

  2. Fold in the raisins and jam until evenly distributed.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that helps the baking soda react and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Jam
Adds sweetness, moisture, and fruity flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing just until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, buttermilk, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, buttermilk, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesButtermilk PieButtermilk Pie12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes