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Dessert

Sarah's Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, butter, flour, raisins, currants, candied citron, almonds, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Sarah's 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Stir in the molasses, spices, flour, raisins, currants, citron, rose-water, and brandy.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda and cream of tartar in a cup of milk and add to the mixture.

  6. Fold in the remaining flour and mix well.

  7. Add the blanched and split almonds.

Bake and store

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan and bake for 4 hours.

  2. Once cool, transfer to a stone jar and pour over 1 quart of brandy.

  3. Seal the jar and store for one year, adding brandy as needed.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Almond + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, giving the heavy batter its structure.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown and keep moisture.
Baking soda
Reacting with the acidic cream of tartar releases gas that lifts the batter.
Raisins
Dried fruit adds sweetness and moisture that keep the cake from drying out.

The step that matters

Baking for 4 hours. A dense fruit batter needs long, moderate heat so the center sets fully before the outside dries and darkens. Too hot a bake can scorch the surface while the middle stays wet.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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