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Dessert

Molasses Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with molasses, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Molasses Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the molasses, sugar, and butter together, then set aside to cool.

  2. Add enough flour to make a batter as thick as a pound cake.

  3. Beat in the eggs well.

Add fruit and bake

  1. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron, along with 2 heaping teaspoons of flour mixed through the fruit.

  2. Pour the mixture into a prepared baking pan and bake for nearly 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Provides dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the cake.
Flour
Builds the batter's structure so the cake holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Flouring the fruit. Tossing the raisins, currants, and citron in flour before folding them in helps keep them dispersed rather than sinking to the bottom of the pan during baking, because the flour coats the fruit and helps the batter grip it.

Swap the currant

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

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

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