Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, sour milk, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and molasses.

  2. Add the sour milk and egg yolks, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the chopped raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it bind and set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with slight acidity.
Sour milk
Supplies acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough. Overmixing also deflates the gas bubbles that the leavening creates.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, milk, egg, cream, 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 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes