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Dessert

Royal Fruit Cake

A dense, spiced fruit cake with raisins, currants, citron, molasses, and spices baked at low temperature.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Royal 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the molasses and milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, and grated nutmeg.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let cool before slicing.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch framework that gives the cake its structure.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the cake rise and brown.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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