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Dessert

A Magnificent Christmas Cake

A rich fruit cake made with flour, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, spices, butter, eggs, and milk, baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

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 together.

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

  4. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture and sweet milk, mixing thoroughly.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, lemon zest, nutmeg, allspice, and salt.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 4 to 5 hours until a toothpick inserted 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with butter.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake for the full time at low heat. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through evenly without the outside over-browning. Doneness should be confirmed with a toothpick test, since a dense batter can look set on top while still being raw in the centre.

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.

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