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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, figs, nuts, citrus, spices, eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and fortified with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, figs, butter, brown sugar, and flour.

  2. Add the walnuts, almonds, citron, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and baking powder.

  3. Stir in the brandy until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into two loaf pans or one larger pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 4 hours.

  2. While warm, pour the Sherry wine over the cake.

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense fruit and nuts together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to a deeper flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the batter rise.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and helps preserve the finished cake.

The step that matters

Bake for 4 hours at low heat. A long, low-temperature bake lets the dense batter cook through evenly without the outside over-browning or drying. Checking doneness near the end helps avoid a raw center or a dry cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, butter, sugar, flour, walnut, 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

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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