Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Fruit Cake

A chocolate cake with raisins, currants, citron, and spices baked in a loaf pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Chocolate Fruit Cake

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the soft sugar, butter, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the sweet cream and melted chocolate, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Beat the eggs and gradually add them to the sugar mixture.

  5. Stir in the flour mixture, followed by the raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

  6. Flour the fruit to prevent sinking.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, cover with chocolate icing.

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Currants
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Flour the fruit to prevent sinking.. Heavy fruit sinks through batter during baking. Tossing it in flour helps it cling to the batter and stay suspended, so the fruit spreads evenly through the cake.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, chocolate, flour, egg, 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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes