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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with sour cream, molasses, sugar, flour, dried fruit, spices, and orange marmalade.

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 ↓

Black Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix sour cream, molasses, sugar, flour, currants, raisins, citron, chopped figs, almonds, and butter.

  3. Add the eggs, leaving out the whites of two, and mix well.

  4. Stir in baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and orange marmalade.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake very slowly until done.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and deep sweetness to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift the batter.
Sour cream
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help rising.

The step that matters

Bake very slowly until done. A low oven temperature lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through evenly without the outside burning before the centre sets. Doneness is best judged by a clean skewer rather than time alone.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, molasses, sugar, flour, raisin, fig, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, molasses, sugar, flour, raisin, fig, almond. 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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