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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, brown sugar, molasses, milk, eggs, and dried fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Plain 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

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

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the molasses and sweet milk.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.

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

  6. Fold in the citron, raisins, currants, figs, and dates.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2½ 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and color to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin, fig, dates, 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.

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