Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake. Mrs. E. C. Haines.

A moist fruit cake made with sugar, butter, sour cream, flour, eggs, mixed fruit, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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. Mrs. E. C. Haines.

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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sour cream and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  7. Fold in the mixed fruit and brandy.

  8. Season with cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 and sugar
Creaming them traps air and sweetens the batter, giving a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Mixed fruit
Adds sweetness, chew, and flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender instead of tough and dense. Overmixing after the flour goes in toughens the crumb.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cream, flour, egg, brandy, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, flour, egg, brandy, cinnamon. 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 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes