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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, raisins, currants, almonds, citron, eggs, spices, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Combine the molasses with the spices in a saucepan and heat gently for 20–30 minutes without boiling.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light.

  3. Gradually stir in the fruit and the dissolved baking soda.

  4. Flour the fruit well. Add more flour if necessary.

  5. Butter a sheet of paper. Line the bottom of a baking pan with the paper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer slices of citron in the pan, followed by a layer of the mixture, repeating until the pan is nearly full.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for 3–4 hours, depending on the thickness of the loaves.

  3. Let the cake cool gradually in the oven.

Finish

  1. Ice the cake when it is cold.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Almond + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together.
Eggs
Add structure and lift to the batter through their proteins and air from beating.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and deep sweetness to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic juices and molasses to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Flour the fruit well. Coating the raisins, currants and citron in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, almond, egg, allspice. 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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