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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with flour, butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, citrus juice, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Black 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the yolks of 24 eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with the molasses.

  6. Fold in the beaten fruit, citron, raisins, currants, lemon juice, orange juice, and grated coconut.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake mold, layering with additional fruit if desired.

  2. Bake slowly and carefully until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed base with the butter.
Eggs (in the method)
Egg yolks add richness, moisture and binding to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic citrus and molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark color to the cake.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and carefully. A low oven heats a dense, fruit-heavy batter gently so the center sets without the outside over-browning or burning. Doneness is checked in the center because the thick batter cooks slowly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, lemon, orange, molasses. 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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