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Dessert

Every Day Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, shortening, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, flour, raisins, currants, citron, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Every Day 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and shortening.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  5. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, and nuts, adding a little more flour if necessary.

Bake and rest

  1. Place the stiff dough into well greased pans.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  3. Let the cakes age before using.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with fat.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour through the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough and fruit together.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruit with flour. Heavy fruit and nuts sink and clump if the dough is too wet, so adding a little flour when needed helps suspend them evenly through the cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, flour, raisin, nuts):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, flour, raisin, nuts. 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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