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Dessert

Fruit Cake

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

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 the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs, mixing in the yolks and the remaining whites.

  4. Gradually add the flour, currants, raisins, and citron.

  5. Stir in the spices and molasses until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for 5 hours or until a toothpick 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
Creamed with sugar-free batter to trap air, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fruit and batter together.
Currants
Add moisture, chewiness, and sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness, and sweetness throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the crumb.

The step that matters

Long, low baking. Five hours at a low 300°F lets the centre set gently without over-browning the outside. Too high a heat would dry or scorch the surface before the middle is cooked, so check with a toothpick near the end.

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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