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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, spices, brandy, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until light, then add the sugar and beat well.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the molasses, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the spices, fruit, and flour, mixing gently.

  5. Coat the fruit with some of the flour to prevent sinking.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake for 3 to 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  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 stiffly beaten, lighten its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness as the fruit softens during the long bake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Sugar
Creams with butter for a fine crumb and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Coating the fruit with flour. Flour-dusted fruit is less likely to sink to the bottom of the dense batter, so it stays distributed through the cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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