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Dessert

Fruit Cake

Fruit cake made with butter, sugar, citron, raisins, currants, almonds, orange and lemon peel, sherry, brandy, eggs, flour, spices, and rose-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit a day before making the cake to soak in brandy and sherry.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the soaked fruit.

Make the batter

  1. Rub the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the egg yolks separately.

  3. Beat the egg whites separately.

  4. Mix the beaten yolks and whites into the batter.

  5. Line a baking pan with paper.

  6. Pour the mixture into the lined pan.

Bake and store

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours.

  2. Wrap the cake in a cloth soaked in whiskey.

  3. Store the wrapped cake in an earthen jar to keep it moist for up to a year or longer.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter while whites add lift and structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven. Long, low-temperature baking lets the dense batter cook through evenly without the outside burning before the center sets. Rushing with higher heat risks a dark crust and a raw middle.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, sherry. 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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