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Dessert

Eggless Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with brown sugar, butter, sour milk, baking soda, flour, cinnamon, cloves, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Eggless Fruit Cake

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 ↓

Eggless 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

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Mix the sour milk with the baking soda and add to the creamed mixture.

  2. Stir in the flour, cinnamon, and cloves until well combined.

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to leaven the batter, giving it lift.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel note to the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing the sour milk and baking soda. The soda must react with the acid in the sour milk while the batter is mixed and baked. Letting the mixture sit too long before baking can lose gas, so the cake may rise less.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, 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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