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Dessert

Fruit or Plum Cake, No. 1

A rich cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, citron, currants, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit or Plum Cake, No. 1

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. Sift the flour and prepare the spices.

  2. Wash, pick, and dry the currants, and seed the raisins.

  3. Butter a pan and line it with two layers of buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a deep pan, beat the butter and sugar together with a wooden ladle until smooth and light.

  2. Whisk the eggs until thick, then gradually stir them into the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with the flour.

  3. Add the brandy, wine, and spices gradually, then fold in the floured fruit.

  4. Beat the entire mixture for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour in the batter and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 5 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps trap air when beaten with the butter for lightness.
Large eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Dried currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow for about 5 hours. A long, gentle bake at 300°F lets the dense batter set through without the outside burning before the centre is cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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