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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, fruit juice, flour, raisins, citron, citrus peel, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fruit Cake

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses and beaten eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the cherry or currant juice.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, raisins, citron, lemon and orange peel, almonds, and mixed spices.

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into tube pans.

  2. Bake for 6 to 8 hours.

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. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

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 body.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour and creaming air into the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
New orleans molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

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

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Cherrythe original

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

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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