Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, candied fruit, spices, and alcohol, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Fruit 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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

Add the fruit and spices

  1. In a separate bowl, toss the raisins, currants, and candied fruits with a little flour.

  2. Add the floured fruit to the batter along with the brandy, wine, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and almond meats.

  3. If using, stir in the molasses.

  4. Sprinkle the baking soda or baking powder over the fruit before mixing it in.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3 hours, 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Baking soda or baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the batter so the cake rises.

The step that matters

Baking time and doneness check. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-filled batter cook through without over-browning the outside. Check the center with a toothpick, since the heavy batter can look set on top while still being underdone inside.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes