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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, molasses, milk, flour, baking powder, lemon juice, mace, egg whites, raisins, currants, and citron or almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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. Beat together the sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Mix the grape jelly, molasses, and milk in a separate bowl.

  3. Stir the wet mixture into the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture.

  5. Add the lemon juice and mace, and mix well.

  6. Beat the egg whites until frothy and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, stir in the raisins, currants, and citron or almonds.

  2. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Grape + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to add lift and a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
New orleans molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and dark color through its sugars.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten until frothy hold air that gives lift. Stirring them in roughly or overmixing knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, grape, molasses, milk, flour, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, grape, molasses, milk, flour, lemon. 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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