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Baking

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, butter, raisins, currants, citron, spices, milk, molasses, brandy, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit 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.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk, molasses, and brandy.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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

  7. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness by binding the batter and helping it set when baked.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour, and a deep sweetness with a hint of acidity.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Mixing only until combined keeps the crumb tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, butter, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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