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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, salt, cold water, almond or pistachio flavoring, nuts, raisins, candied pineapple, cherries, citron, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until light and frothy, adding 1 or 2 tablespoons of boiling water if necessary.

  2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together three times.

  3. Add 5 tablespoons of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar and cream again.

  4. Add the remaining dry ingredients alternately with the cold water, beating hard after each addition.

Add the fruit and nuts

  1. Fold in the chopped nuts, floured raisins, floured pineapple, floured citron, and floured cherries.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the flavoring and then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites without beating the mixture further.

  2. Bake in a well-greased and flour-dusted loaf pan in a moderate oven (350°F) for about one hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, light crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in last to add lightness and help the cake rise.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and tenderness.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness and bursts of fruit flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Beating the mixture further after folding them in knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up denser and flatter.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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