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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with flour, butter, brown sugar, eggs, milk, raisins, currants, mixed peel, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Plain 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 the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk gradually.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Fold in the raisins, currants, and mixed peel.

  8. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 3 to 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help set the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Brown sugar
Creaming with butter aerates the batter, and its molasses adds moisture and flavor.
Raisins
Plump, sweet fruit that adds moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks; overmixing or deflating them during folding loses the air that lightens the cake, leaving it dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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