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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A dense fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, dates, cherries, figs, candied peel, nuts, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, spices, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Christmas 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. Cream the butter and flour together.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar, then add to the batter.

Add the fruit

  1. Dredge the fruit with some of the flour.

  2. Mix the fruit slowly with the well-beaten egg whites, adding the brandy last.

  3. Sprinkle cinnamon on the fruit.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake pan and bake slowly for 6 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Pecans + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Dates + pecanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Adds sweetness, chew and bulk to the cake's fruit content.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure, with whites adding lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and moisture retention.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the fruit.

The step that matters

Mix the fruit slowly with the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the whites' air bubbles intact, which helps the heavy fruit cake rise and stay light rather than dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, dates, fig, orange, lemon, pecans, walnut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, dates, fig, orange, lemon, pecans, walnut. 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.

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