Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Cream Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with raisins, walnuts, orange zest, and sour cream.

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

Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sour Cream 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 the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses and eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, walnuts, orange juice, and rind.

  4. In another bowl, combine the mace, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, and sour cream.

  5. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, then fold in the flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake for about 60 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Walnut + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure to the crumb as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift and lighten the cake.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and adds richness and fat for a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and keeps it moist, with molasses adding depth and browning.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Mix just until the flour disappears.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, egg, raisin, walnut, orange. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes