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Dessert

Dark Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, citron, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dark 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the molasses and milk, mixing well.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon.

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

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake for 1.5 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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 they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter hold air when creamed.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and moisture to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and cream of tartar to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring only until combined limits gluten development, keeping the cake tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, butter, sugar, molasses, milk, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, sugar, molasses, milk, egg, cream. 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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