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Dessert

IVeddmg Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, rose water, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, almonds, spices, raisins, figs, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

IVeddmg 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.

  3. Add the rose water and beaten eggs, mixing well.

  4. Sift the flour with baking soda and cream of tartar, then gradually add to the mixture.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Dredge the fruit in flour and fold it into the batter along with the chopped almonds and spices.

  2. Pour the batter into loaf pans.

  3. Bake for 4 hours or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for lightness and adds sweetness and moisture to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the batter as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit in flour before folding it in. Flour coating helps suspend heavy fruit so it does not sink to the bottom of the batter during baking, keeping the fruit evenly distributed.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, rose, egg, flour, cream, almond. 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

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