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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with raisins, walnuts, molasses, sour milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

Make the batter

  1. Add the molasses, baking soda, spices, and well-beaten eggs; mix well.

  2. In a separate bowl, flour the raisins and walnuts, then gradually add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and flour until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm while adding moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color with browning.

The step that matters

Stir in the sour milk and flour until just combined. Once flour is wet, stirring develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Mixing only until no dry flour remains keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, raisin, milk, flour, egg, molasses):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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