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Dessert

Paradise Special Fruit Cake

A fruit cake containing shortening, sugar, cherry juice, eggs, orange, walnuts, raisins, flour, baking powder, salt, maraschino cherries, butter, powdered sugar, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Paradise Special Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the shortening and gradually add the sugar.

  3. Blend in the well-beaten eggs.

  4. Chop the raisins, cherries, orange peel, and nuts using a food chopper.

  5. Fold half of the chopped fruit mixture into the creamed mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  2. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the liquid.

  3. Pour the batter into two round cake pans.

  4. Bake for 25 minutes.

Make the filling and icing

  1. For the filling and icing, cream together the butter and powdered sugar.

  2. Blend in the well-beaten egg white.

  3. Add the remaining fruit mixture.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cherry + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Cherry + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Shortening
Provides fat that creams with sugar to create a tender, fine-textured crumb.
Cake flour
Forms the structure of the cake when its starch sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness, and moisture to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.
Black walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with the liquid. Alternating small additions of flour and liquid keeps the batter emulsified and evenly mixed. Adding everything at once or overmixing can make the cake dense or tough, because flour proteins and starch develop with too much stirring.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cherry, egg, walnut, raisin, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cherry, egg, walnut, raisin, flour, butter. 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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