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Dessert

Farmers' Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with dried apples, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Farmers' 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 the apples

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. Chop the soaked apples finely.

  3. Simmer the chopped apples in 1 cup of molasses for 2 hours.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg and sour milk to the mixture and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

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

  5. Fold in the simmered apples last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light, tender texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during baking.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the batter.

The step that matters

Simmer the apples until fully softened. Dried apples must be soft before folding in, since hard pieces stay tough and do not blend into the batter. Simmering in molasses also rehydrates and sweetens them.

Swap the clove

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

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

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