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Fruit Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare currants by washing in warm water until clear, then drain and dry.

  2. Seed raisins by pouring boiling water over them, then clip with scissors or cut with a knife.

  3. Slice citron thinly, ensuring pieces are small to prevent breaking the cake.

  4. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  5. Add spices, molasses, and milk (if using) to the creamed mixture.

  6. Beat eggs separately, then add yolks to the mixture and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  7. Sift flour with baking powder or soda and cream of tartar, then add to the mixture.

  8. Dredge the prepared fruit with a little flour and fold into the batter.

  9. Line the cake pan with three layers of paper, greasing each layer.

  10. Spread a paste of equal parts Graham and fine flour over the first paper, then add the batter.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More fruit cake recipes

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

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