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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, raisins, currants, dried cherries, nuts, spices, eggs, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs a few at a time, whipping well after each addition.

  3. Drench the fruit in the flour.

  4. Mix the fruit and flour together.

  5. Add the lemon flavoring and spices. Mix well.

  6. Gradually add the remaining flour. Mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Line a cake mold with heavy paper.

  2. Grease both the mold and the paper.

  3. Fill the mold with the batter.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped in, they add structure and lift to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the fruit and batter together.
Unsalted butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens and helps give a fine, even crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Drench the fruit in the flour. Coating the fruit in flour helps keep it from sinking to the bottom of the batter during baking, so the fruit stays spread evenly through the cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, raisin, nuts, clove, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, raisin, nuts, clove, cinnamon, sugar. 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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