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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, molasses, and a mixture of raisins, currants, dates, walnuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and the flour sifted with the baking powder.

  3. Stir in the fruit, molasses, and spices.

  4. Slice the citron very thin or chop it finely, then add it along with the orange juice.

  5. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered and floured long, narrow, deep aluminum pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 to 4 hours, reducing the heat after the first 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter and whites, folded in last, lighten it and help it rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps create a light structure and adds sweetness and browning.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and nuts in the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the dense cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air that lightens the heavy fruit batter. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, walnut, butter, flour, raisin, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut, butter, flour, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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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