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Dessert

Fruit and Feather Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, cinnamon, cloves, wine or coffee, raisins, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit and Feather 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. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the batter.

  7. Divide the batter into three portions.

  8. To one portion, add cinnamon, cloves, wine (or grape juice or coffee), and raisins.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the layers into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes with currant jelly, placing the spiced fruit layer in the center.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, giving the cake its light, feathery structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Its starch sets during baking, forming the cake's main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the layers rise and turn airy.
Sugar
Helps the batter cream and brown, and adds sweetness and tenderness.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness to the spiced center layer.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the batter's air; overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cinnamon, wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cinnamon, wine. 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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