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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, milk, dried fruits, nuts, and preserved fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  5. Gradually add the flour and milk, alternating between the two, and mix until smooth.

  6. Fold in the raisins, figs, almonds, walnuts, citron, and baking powder.

  7. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Drop the conserved cherries on top of the batter.

  3. Bake for 3 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and nuts in place as the cake sets.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fine texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dense fruit batter rises and lightens.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently, just until combined, keeps that air in the batter so the cake stays light instead of collapsing or turning dense.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, milk, raisin, 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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