Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with brown 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 nuts

  1. Wash and dry currants.

  2. Wash, seed, and cut raisins.

  3. Wash, dry, and stone dates.

  4. Cut the peel into very thin slices.

  5. Blanch almonds and cut them into pieces.

  6. Mix the fruit and nuts.

  7. Dredge the mixture with ¼ cup of flour.

  8. Dredge the citron peel with flour.

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, then the stiffly beaten whites; beat until very light.

  5. Alternately add the fruit juice and coffee with the remaining flour; beat well.

  6. Fold in the fruit mixture, one-third at a time.

Bake

  1. Line the pans with three thicknesses of paper, carefully fitted at the corners.

  2. Butter the top layer of paper.

  3. Fill the pans two-thirds full with the mixture.

  4. Smooth over the top.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 250°F to 300°F for 3 to 4 hours.

  6. Steam medium-sized cakes for 2 ½ hours.

  7. Bake for 1 hour.

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten stiff, lighten its structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the batter brown during baking.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Citron
Adds candied-peel flavor and a firm, chewy bite between the batter.

The step that matters

Fill the pans two-thirds full and bake slowly. Dense fruit cakes rise only modestly, so overfilling can spill over. A slow, long bake lets the heavy batter cook through to the centre without the outside burning.

Swap the currant

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

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

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