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Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, dates, almonds, raisins, currants, citron peel, lemon peel, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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).

  2. Line a pan with three layers of paper, buttering only the top layer.

  3. Seed the raisins and tear them into quarters; wash and dry the currants.

  4. Stone the dates and cut them into small pieces.

  5. Blanch and chop the almonds; cut the citron and lemon peel into thin slices and then into small pieces.

  6. Mix the fruit (except peel) and dredge with 4 tablespoons of flour.

  7. Dredge the citron and lemon peel with flour.

  8. Mix and sift the remaining flour with the spices.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, then add the brown sugar and the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind; beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the liquid and sifted flour alternately, beating well.

  4. Finally, add the fruit and nuts.

Bake

  1. Put a layer of the mixture into the pan, followed by a layer of the peel; repeat until the pan is two-thirds full, finishing with the cake mixture on top.

  2. Bake for 2 to 3 hours.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg
Beaten whites add lift and the yolk adds richness and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together around the fruit.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavour.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the dense fruit cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking low and slow. A long, gentle bake at a low temperature lets the dense batter cook through to the centre without the fruit-heavy outside burning.

Swap the dates

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

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

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