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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense, spiced cake made with raisins, currants, candied fruit, and spices, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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.

Prepare the batter

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

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

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

  4. Stir in the brandy and wine.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  6. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Flour the raisins and currants with a little of the flour mixture.

  2. Fold the floured fruit, sweet almond-meats, candied lemon, citron, and molasses into the batter.

  3. Add the baking soda or baking powder to the fruit mixture before combining.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 3 hours.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 as they set during baking.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps creaming trap air for a lighter crumb.
Baking soda or baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Flouring the raisins and currants. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during the long bake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, sugar, flour, egg, brandy, wine. 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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