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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, and spices, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a saucepan, mix the butter, molasses, and cream, and melt them together.

  3. Stir in the brown sugar until well combined.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until very light.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually mix in the flour, then add the raisins, currants, and citron.

  2. Add the melted mixture and spices to the flour mixture and combine well.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared baking pans.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 dense batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as they are beaten light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, carrying flavor through the dense crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and color to the finished cake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until very light. Beaten eggs trap air that helps lift the heavy batter. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the batter should be combined without overmixing once the flour is added.

Swap the currant

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

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

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