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Dessert

Christmas Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, almonds, candied peel, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices, lemon, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Christmas 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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, whip the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the fruits and spices with a little flour.

  4. Gradually add the fruit mixture to the butter mixture, stirring to combine.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for four hours. Ice if desired.

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 + flourtop 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit suspended in the batter.
Raisins
Add moisture, chew and sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture, tartness and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the fruit mixture to the butter mixture. Adding the fruit in stages and stirring gently keeps the batter evenly mixed and prevents the heavy fruit from sinking to the bottom while the cake bakes.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, almond, lemon, sugar, butter, egg, 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.

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