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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, flour, spices, raisins, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sour cream and dissolve the baking soda in it before mixing in.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Fold in the raisins and chopped nuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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 to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream before mixing in. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour cream spreads it evenly, so the cake rises uniformly rather than developing pockets or dense patches.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, egg, flour, cinnamon, 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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