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Dessert

Fruit Cake, Inexpensive

A simple fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, and preserved orange peel, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit Cake, Inexpensive

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. In a bowl, mix the brown sugar and shortening until combined.

  2. Stir in the sour milk.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water.

  4. Add the dissolved baking soda to the sour milk mixture.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

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

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown.
Shortening
Provides fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Builds the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture, sweetness, and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding them gradually and mixing only until combined keeps flour from overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice, raisin. 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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