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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with brown sugar, flour, raisins, currants, figs, butter, molasses, spices, eggs, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the molasses and melted currant jelly mixed with hot water.

  5. In another bowl, combine the browned flour, baking soda, mace, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and nutmeg.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Fold in the raisins, currants, and figs.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for several hours 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper caramel flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift and lighten the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a robust, slightly acidic flavor.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the batter from overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, raisin, currant, fig, butter, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, raisin, currant, fig, butter, 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 →

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