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Dessert

Summer Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with brown sugar, butter, buttermilk, flour, currants, raisins, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Summer 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).

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the buttermilk and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour until combined.

  4. Fold in the currants, raisins, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake slowly until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel flavor, and helps the cake brown.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until a toothpick comes out clean. Low oven heat cooks a dense, fruit-filled batter through without drying or burning the outside. Stopping too early leaves the centre wet, so test in the middle before removing the cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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