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Dessert

Coffee Fruit Cake

A cake made with molasses, dried persimmons, sugar, butter, egg, coffee, flour, spices, baking powder, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Persimmon and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil together molasses and minced dried persimmons for five minutes.

  2. Cream sugar, butter, and egg in a bowl.

  3. Stir in the boiled mixture and strong coffee.

  4. Add flour, mixed spice, baking powder, and baking soda; mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes to 1 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.

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. Persimmon + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the cake.
Dried persimmons
Add chewy texture and natural fruit sweetness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor.
Egg
Helps bind the batter and gives structure to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and darken.

Swap the persimmon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, butter, egg, coffee, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Persimmonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, egg, coffee, flour. 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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