Skip to main content
Dessert

Eggless Fruit Cake

A baked fruit cake made without eggs, using sour milk, butter, sugar, spices, raisins, and pastry flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Eggless Fruit Cake

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 ↓

Eggless 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. In a mixing bowl, beat the sugar and butter together until creamy.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and stir it into the sour milk.

  4. Add the spices to the milk mixture, then gradually mix in the flour.

  5. Fold in the raisins that have been lightly coated with a bit of flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake slowly until done.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, producing gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, lightening the crumb.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, moist texture when creamed with butter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruitiness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. If it is not fully dissolved and evenly mixed into the sour milk, pockets of unreacted soda can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes