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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with butter, sugar, flour, almonds, dried fruit, wine, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

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

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the beaten eggs gradually.

  5. Fold in the almonds, cut citron, raisins, figs, and currants.

  6. Mix the wine and brandy into the batter.

  7. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice, and stir until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake slowly for 4 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Almonds
Add texture and richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake slowly for 4 hours. A long, low bake lets the heavy, fruit-filled batter cook through evenly without the outside burning or the centre staying raw. Checking that the cake is set through before removing it prevents a gummy middle.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, almond, egg, raisin, fig. 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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