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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, coconut, milk, walnuts, raisins, candied pineapple, cherries, flour, baking powder, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

White 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk and prepared coconut.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

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

  7. Fold in the walnuts, raisins, candied pineapple, and glazed cherries.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Coconut + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it is mixed with the liquids and bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender texture and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Add structure and help bind the batter as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender crumb.
Walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coconut, butter, milk, walnut, raisin, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, butter, milk, walnut, raisin, flour. 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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