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Dessert

Large Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, fruit, spices, and nuts.

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

Large Fruit 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs two at a time, whipping them in thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the ground ginger, lemon extract, and mixed spices.

  4. Add the chopped peel and chopped almonds, mixing well.

  5. Drench the fruit in flour, shaking off excess, then add to the mixture.

  6. Gently fold in the remaining flour until just combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a mold with several layers of greased parchment paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4½ to 6 hours, depending on the heat.

  3. Once baked, ice and decorate as desired.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whipped in to bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, even texture when creamed.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness through the dense fruit cake.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow. A slow oven and long bake let the dense batter cook through evenly without the outside browning or burning before the centre sets. Because heat varies, the cake should be checked for doneness rather than timed strictly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, lemon, almond, raisin. 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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