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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with powdered sugar, butter, eggs, spices, brandy, flour, citron, candied peel, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the powdered sugar and butter until light.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the ground mace, cinnamon, cloves, and brandy.

  4. Gradually add the flour and mix until combined.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the Sultana raisins by picking them apart and placing them in a coarse sieve.

  2. Dust the raisins with a little flour and rub them to remove small stems.

  3. Shake the sieve well and pick out any stones or large stems.

Bake

  1. Fold in the prepared fruit into the batter.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets during baking.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the butter cream to a light, airy base.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the prepared fruit into the batter.. Fruit that is still wet or heavy can sink or make the batter soggy. Dusting the raisins with flour helps suspend them evenly through the batter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, brandy, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, brandy, flour. 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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