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Dessert

Excellent Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, brown sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, walnuts, citron peel, spices, and eggs, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Excellent 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 the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, molasses, chopped walnuts, spices, chopped citron peel, beaten eggs, and flour. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter between two large cake pans, filling them nearly full.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Whipped whites and yolks add lift and structure to the heavy batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and nuts together as the cake sets.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel depth to the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, raisin, currant, molasses, cider, flour. 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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