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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with eggs, brown sugar, sour cream, butter, flour, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and brown sugar until well combined.

  3. Stir in the sour cream and softened butter until smooth.

  4. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, spices, lemon zest, vanilla, and salt.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Fold in the raisins and currants.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 45-50 minutes or 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the cake structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its main structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and cream of tartar to lift the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity helps the baking soda react.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing toughens the crumb and can make the cake dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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