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Dessert

Excellent Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, flour, brown sugar, eggs, wine, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Excellent Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and mace.

  3. Stir in the molasses and sour milk, and beat well.

  4. Add the stiffly beaten egg yolks and the wine, and stir again thoroughly.

  5. Add the sifted flour, alternating with the well-beaten egg whites.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  7. Dredge the cut-up fruit with 2 heaping tablespoons of flour and mix thoroughly into the batter.

Bake and cool

  1. Grease two average-sized baking pans, line them with greased paper, and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Let cool in the pan.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Egg whites and yolks add structure and lift to the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep caramel flavor with browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk and molasses acid to help the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in water before adding it. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the sour milk and molasses, to react and produce gas. Dissolving it first spreads it evenly so the cake rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, wine, raisin, 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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