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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, flour, butter, raisins, currants, figs, nuts, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

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 sugar together.

  3. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  4. Mix the eggs with the butter, sugar, and salt.

  5. Add half of the flour mixed with the baking powder.

  6. Stir in the brandy.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. In another bowl, mix the raisins, cinnamon, citron, figs, nuts, and spices with the remaining flour to prevent settling.

  2. Combine all mixtures. Stir well.

  3. Pour into a pan lined with oiled paper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat in the creamed batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the batter rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Dusting the fruit with flour. Tossing the raisins, currants, figs, and nuts with flour before combining helps keep them from sinking to the bottom of the batter during baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, raisin, sugar, butter, fig, walnut. 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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