Skip to main content
Dessert

Mothek Doechestee's Black Cake

A dense, spiced fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, spices, and soaked in brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mothek Doechestee's Black 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. Stone the raisins and soak them in the brandy overnight, covering tightly.

  2. Brown the flour to darken it.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the soaked raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

  4. Gradually add the browned flour and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 to 4 hours, 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb and richness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its starches set in the oven.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the fruit cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 to 4 hours, until a toothpick comes out clean. A low, slow oven heats the dense batter gently so the centre sets without the outside burning. Dense fruit cakes can look done before the middle has set, so testing with a toothpick in the centre matters.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes