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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with sugar, flour, baking powder, butter, sweet milk, egg whites, blanched almonds, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Flour and almond 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 ↓

White Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then stir into the butter mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  6. Gently fold in the sliced citron (dusted lightly with flour) and chopped almonds.

Bake

  1. Line two medium-sized cake tins with buttered paper.

  2. Pour the batter into the tins, smoothing the tops.

  3. Bake slowly until done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to create a tender, fine-textured crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, traps air for a lighter texture.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff and folded in, they add lift and a light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed into the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Blanched almonds
Add texture and nutty flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, while gentle folding keeps the batter light and the cake from turning dense.

“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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