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Dessert

Light Fruit Cake

A light fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, milk, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Light Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and confectioner's sugar.

  2. Add the yolks of the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Sift the flour with the cream of tartar three times, then add to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add it to the batter.

  5. Mix in the ground cloves, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and vanilla extract.

  6. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites, raisins, currants, and floured citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whites beaten and folded in lighten its structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and milk to help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that works with the baking soda to leaven the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten to stiff foam. Overmixing or deflating them while folding loses the air that lightens the cake, so fold gently and just until combined.

Swap the clove

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

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

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