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Dessert

Fruit or Black Cake

A spiced fruit cake made with raisins, citron, spices, whiskey, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 or Black 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

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

  2. Line the bottom and sides of the cake pan with well-buttered white paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, rub together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the yolks of the eggs and part of the flour, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add the remaining flour, whiskey, and spices, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Dredge the fruit with flour and fold it into the batter just before pouring it into the prepared cake 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 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
Yolks enrich the batter and stiffly beaten whites add lift and an airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it gives the cake richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit with flour before folding it in. Flour coating helps keep heavy fruit suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom. Folding gently just before panning limits overmixing, which would toughen the cake and deflate the whipped egg whites.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

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