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Dessert

Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 frothy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the sugar mixture.

  4. Brown the flour.

  5. Let the browned flour cool.

  6. Add the cooled flour to the mixture.

  7. Incorporate the molasses and spices into the batter.

  8. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  9. Mix the dissolved baking soda with the brandy and wine.

  10. Stir the liquid mixture into the cake batter.

Add fruit and bake

  1. Fold in the fruit, dredged with flour, just before pouring the batter into pans.

  2. Bake immediately at 300°F (150°C) for 2.5 to 3 hours if the loaves are large.

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 eggs add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavour to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic liquids to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruit. Dredging the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended instead of sinking to the bottom of the batter. Adding it just before panning keeps the batter from being overworked, which would toughen the crumb.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, 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 sugar, flour, 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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