Name: Plain Fruit Cake
Ingredients: one cup butter; one cupful molasses; one cupful sour milk; one teaspoonful soda; quarter cup shredded citron; three well beaten eggs; cinnamon; cloves

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plain Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Beat to a cream one cup butter and two of sugar. Add one cupful molasses, one cupful sour milk, one teaspoonful soda and stir until the mixture stops "purring." Add three well beaten eggs, a teaspoonful each of cinnamon, cloves and nut- meg, a quarter cup shredded citron or preserved watermelon rind, and a cup each of seeded raisins and currants well dredged with flour. Add sifted flour to make rather stiff, turn into tube tins lined with buttered paper and bake in a slow oven. — Mrs. M. S. Carpenter, Hackensack, N. J.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

449Calories

15 gProtein

25 gFat

44 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 7 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Sour Milk	1 cup (244ml) whole	149
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Molasses	1 tbsp (20g)	58
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Clove	1 tsp ground (2g)	7
Cinnamon	1 tsp ground (2.6g)	6

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,928 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,483 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the clove

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

Nutmegfits better
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, milk, egg, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.