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Dessert

Fruit Bars

Fruit Bars are sweet baked sticks made with sugar, lard or butter, raisins, currants, flour, eggs, molasses, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Bars

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in water.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs, molasses, and water to the mixture.

  4. Mix in the flour, then add the currants, raisins, and cinnamon.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 12 equal parts and roll each part into a log the length of cake pans.

  2. Do not flatten the dough, as it will spread while baking.

  3. Place 3 pieces in a pan, wash with egg, and bake at 300°F (150°C).

  4. Once baked and cooled, cut into sticks 1 inch wide.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Baking soda
Dissolved in water to react with the molasses and lift the dough as it bakes.
Lard or butter
Creamed with the sugar to add fat, tenderness, and richness to the crumb.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with the fat to add sweetness and help create a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed in, setting as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, depth of flavor, and browning to the finished bars.

The step that matters

Do not flatten the dough. The dough spreads considerably while baking, so leaving the logs unflattened keeps their shape and prevents the bars from becoming too wide and thin.

Swap the currant

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

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

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