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Dessert

President's Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with eggs, sugar, raisins, dried fruits, nuts, spices, butter, flour, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

President's 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Stir in the raisins, grape jelly, crystallized cherries, crystallized pineapple, orange paste, ground almonds, and pecans.

  4. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, flour, citron, melted chocolate, allspice, and cordial mixture, then mix until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

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

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

  2. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  5. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten with sugar to bind the batter and add structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and nuts together as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, coating the flour to soften the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown during the long bake.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking time and doneness check. A dense, fruit-packed cake bakes slowly and unevenly at low heat. Testing the center with a toothpick until it comes out clean confirms the middle is set, preventing a gummy or underbaked interior.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, raisin, grape, pineapple, orange, almond):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, raisin, grape, pineapple, orange, 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.

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