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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, lemon extract, coffee, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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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 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. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the flour, raisins, currants, and citron, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the molasses, beaten eggs, sour milk, and dissolved baking soda.

  5. Stir in the lemon extract, cold coffee, and spices.

  6. Combine all mixtures and pour into a prepared baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 4 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. 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. 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness that promotes browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda fully before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the sour milk. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter, soapy spots and uneven rising.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, molasses, egg, milk. 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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