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Dessert

Fruit Cake, Inexpensive

A moist fruit cake made with raisins, currants, brown sugar, lard, and spices, baked slowly.

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

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a pot, combine raisins, currants, brown sugar, lard, baking soda, and boiling water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil on the stove.

  3. Once cool, add the egg, flour, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Mix well until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about two 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 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

Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot boiled fruit mixture to help the cake rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Lard
Adds fat for a tender texture and moist crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and flour after the mixture cools. Adding the egg to a very hot mixture can scramble it and uneven the batter, while the flour needs a cooled, evenly mixed base to develop a smooth, uniform crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

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