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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, chocolate, spices, fruit, nuts, potatoes, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease the cake pan well.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

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

  5. Fold in the ground chocolate, mixed citron and currants, chopped walnuts, mashed potatoes, and seeded raisins.

  6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture, helping the cake stay soft and moist after baking.

The step that matters

Check for doneness with a toothpick. Fruit and chocolate add moisture and weight, so the centre can stay wet even when the edges look done. A toothpick inserted in the centre coming out clean shows the cake is fully baked before cooling.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, milk, chocolate, 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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