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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, wine, brandy, milk, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the brown sugar and butter together for a few minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour.

  4. Add the molasses and spices.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk. Strain the mixture.

  6. Mix the strained milk with the brandy and wine.

  7. Combine this mixture with the cake batter.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Just before baking, fold in the fruit gradually, adding a handful of each type alternately.

  2. Bake in thick loaves for 2.5 to 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten until stiff, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb and richness.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and dissolved milk to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Fold in the fruit gradually. Adding the fruit in small alternating handfuls spreads it evenly through the batter. Heavy fruit dumped in at once tends to sink to the bottom and can make the cake dense and uneven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, raisin, wine, brandy. 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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