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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with butter, brown sugar, sweet milk, molasses, eggs, browned flour, spices, currants, citron, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Black 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and molasses, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the beaten egg yolks with the mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the browned flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and spices.

  2. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Stir in the currants, citron, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 3 hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, folded in, lighten its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and creaming with butter helps aerate the batter.
Browned flour
Provides the flour structure and a deeper, toasty flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and molasses to leaven the cake.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that lightens the heavy, fruit-filled batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates it and yields a denser cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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