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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, flour, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, spices, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 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. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the flour gradually, mixing well.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Incorporate the egg yolks and the additional yolks into the butter mixture.

  5. Stir in the currants, raisins, and citron.

  6. Add the spices and molasses, mixing until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for 5 hours or until a toothpick inserted 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat that coats the flour.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure; whipped whites add lift.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with mild acidity.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites folded into batter trap air that expands in the oven, giving lift. Under-beaten whites lose volume and leave the cake dense, while over-beaten whites turn grainy and collapse.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, currant, raisin, clove, cinnamon. 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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