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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense, sweet cake made with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, raisins, currants, citron, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

Make the batter

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

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

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

  4. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Remove 1 cup of batter and set aside.

  2. Pour the remaining batter into a greased cake pan.

  3. Spread the reserved batter over the top of the cake.

  4. Bake for about 3 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow until a toothpick comes out clean. A long, low bake lets the dense fruit-filled batter cook through without the outside burning. Testing the centre with a toothpick confirms it is fully set before cooling.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, milk, raisin, currant. 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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