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Dessert

Black Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, citron, almonds, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, wine, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

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

Black Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Remove the gills from the raisins and cut the raisins.

  2. Wash the currants and dry them thoroughly.

  3. Cut the citron into very thin pieces.

  4. Blanch the almonds and pound the almonds.

  5. Dredge the raisins and currants with flour.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately, then mix the beaten eggs together.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar.

  3. Gradually stir in the eggs, fruit, and wine mixed with spices, adding the citron last.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased pan lined with paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for five hours for a large cake or four hours for a smaller cake.

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

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

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (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 add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and nuts in the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness, and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the citron last. Citron is heavy and can sink to the bottom of a dense batter if mixed too early, so it is folded in at the end to distribute it evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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