Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

Fruit Cake is a sweet loaf made with flour, butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, spices, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Make 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 molasses and eggs, mixing well after each addition.

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

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

  6. Fold in the currants, raisins, citron, and lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1½ hours, 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
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.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lift the batter and help it rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and browning to the crumb.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Stirring only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender instead of tough and dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, clove, mace, molasses):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, clove, mace, 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes