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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with raisins, currants, flour, butter, wine, brandy, molasses, and spices, baked for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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 fruit

  1. Wash the currants and dry them.

  2. Cut the raisins.

  3. Dredge the fruit with flour to prevent sinking.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light.

  3. Add the fruit.

  4. Mix in the cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Add the molasses.

  6. Add half of the browned flour.

  7. Mix in dates, figs, and almonds.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for four 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten until light, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Molasses
Adds moisture, depth of flavour and a darker colour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit with flour. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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