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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cakes

A simple fruit cake made with flour, currants, sugar, and milk, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,359 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Plain Fruit Cakes

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. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Rub the dripping into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

  3. Add the currants, allspice, and sugar; mix well.

  4. Pour in the milk and stir with a wooden spoon until combined.

Bake

  1. Grease a 1-quart tin and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Dripping
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Breadmaker’s baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and provides moisture, bringing the batter together.

The step that matters

Rubbing the dripping into the flour. The fat must be worked into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Coating the flour particles with fat limits gluten formation, which keeps the cake tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, allspice, sugar, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, allspice, sugar, milk. 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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