Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake Without Eggs

A moist fruit cake made without eggs, using molasses, raisins, spices, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Cake Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the molasses, sugar, and butter until very light.

  2. Add the cinnamon, raisins, citron, baking soda, cloves, sour milk, and grated nutmeg, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter reaches a thick consistency.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, deep sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture when beaten with the sugar.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter reaches a thick consistency. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the batter's thickness. Too much flour makes the cake dry and dense, while too little leaves it too loose to hold its shape.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cinnamon, sugar, butter, clove, milk, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cinnamon, sugar, butter, clove, milk, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes