Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, and a mixture of currants, raisins, dates, almonds, citron, grape juice, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rich Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and pans

  1. Pick over, wash, and dry the currants.

  2. Wash, seed, and cut the raisins.

  3. Wash, dry, and stone the dates.

  4. Cut the citron peel into very thin slices.

  5. Blanch the almonds and cut them into pieces.

  6. Mix the fruit and nuts, dredging them with ½ cup of the flour.

  7. Dredge the citron peel with flour.

  8. Line the pans with three thicknesses of paper, fitting carefully at the corners.

  9. Butter the top layer of paper.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter thoroughly.

  2. Slowly add the sifted sugar and beat until very light.

  3. Mix in one-quarter of the flour and spices.

  4. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  5. Add the beaten egg whites; beat until very light.

  6. Add the fruit juice and coffee with the remaining flour; beat well.

  7. Add the fruit in three parts, mixing well after each addition.

Bake

  1. Fill the pans two-thirds full with the mixture and smooth the top.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 250°F to 300°F (120°C to 150°C) for 3 to 4 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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
Yolks enrich and bind, while beaten whites lighten the batter for structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture and a soft, caramel-like flavor.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness, chew, and fruity flavor throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Fill the pans two-thirds full. Fruit cakes rise and spread during long baking, so overfilling can cause overflow and uneven cooking, while the heavy batter needs room to set through the center.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove. 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 →

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes