Skip to main content
Dessert

A Magnificent Christmas Cake

A moist, spiced fruitcake made with flour, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, butter, eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Magnificent Christmas 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. In a large bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and sweet milk to the butter mixture, and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring until combined.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

  7. Add lemon, nutmeg, allspice, and salt to taste.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 4 to 5 hours until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Once cooled, ice the cake and decorate with holly.

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness and moisture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cake rise during baking.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture gradually. Adding flour in portions and stirring just until combined keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing, which would develop gluten and make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, butter, egg, milk, lemon. 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 christmas cake recipes

Black 61German 4Plain 3 See all 54 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes