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Dessert

Fruit Cake From Dough

A fruit cake made by mixing sugar, butter, dough, eggs, baking soda, fruit, spices, and flour, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Cake From Dough

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

Make the batter

  1. Add the dough, eggs, baking soda, fruit, and spices, mixing well.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is as stiff as common fruit cake.

  3. Set the batter in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter cream into a light base.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and rich flavor.
Dough
Provides the bulk and yeast-like body that helps the batter rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Builds structure so the batter sets into a sliceable cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is as stiff as common fruit cake. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the batter's consistency. Too much flour makes the cake dense and dry, while too little leaves it too loose to hold its shape and rise well.

“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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