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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, eggs, butter, lard, sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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

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 butter, lard, and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the molasses.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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

  7. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Creaming with butter helps trap air, and sweetness adds flavor and browning.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and deep flavor, and helps the cake brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, which can toughen the cake. Mixing only until combined keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the currant

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

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

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