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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist raisin cake baked with brown sugar, butter, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs, molasses, and sour milk; mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking soda and flour until combined.

  4. Fold in the chopped raisins and spices to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and gives the cake a soft, caramel-like flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and flour until combined. Baking soda needs acid from the sour milk and molasses to work, so the batter should be mixed just until combined. Overmixing after the flour goes in develops gluten and can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

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