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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, spices, flour, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 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

  1. Prepare the fruit a day in advance by shredding the citron, stoning the raisins, and washing both the raisins and currants thoroughly before drying them.

  2. Toss the currants and raisins in a little flour to coat them, then sift to remove excess flour.

  3. Line a large bread pan with three layers of paper on the sides and five on the bottom, greasing the top layer.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, molasses, and coffee, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour with the spices. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for three hours.

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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense fruit together as the cake sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Coating the fruit in flour. Tossing the currants and raisins in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour. 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 →

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