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Dessert

Lincoln Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with butter, brown sugar, flour, eggs, sour cream, spices, rose water, lemon peel, dried fruit, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Lincoln 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).

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the sour cream or buttermilk.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Fold in the rose water, lemon peel, and mixed dried fruit.

Bake

  1. 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sour cream or buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderizing the crumb and reacting with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic dairy and hot water to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel note while helping the batter stay soft.

The step that matters

Mixing in the dry ingredients. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, so mixing only until just combined keeps the cake tender rather than tough and dense.

“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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