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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A light, buttery cake with walnuts, cherries, almonds, citron, and orange zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sifted flour mixed with baking powder.

  3. Stir in the orange juice.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  5. Combine the two mixtures.

  6. Fold in the cherries, almonds, citron, walnuts, and orange rind and juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered deep cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

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

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

  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 sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whites beaten to stiffness lift the batter, while yolks add richness and structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks before the sugar is added and the mixtures combined. Under-beaten whites collapse, leaving a dense cake, while sugar added gradually keeps the foam stable.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, flour, egg, walnut, almond. 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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