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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet loaf made with flour, butter, molasses, eggs, milk, spices, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub together the flour, butter, and brown sugar in a large bowl.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the molasses.

Make the batter

  1. Add the raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm milk and add it to the mixture.

  3. Flour the currants and add them to the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake for 2½ hours, or 3 hours if using a very large loaf pan.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lifts the dense batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel in the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour, and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit; flouring them helps keep them spread through the batter.

The step that matters

Flouring the currants. Dusting the fruit with flour helps it cling to the batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the loaf during baking, keeping the fruit evenly distributed.

Swap the currant

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

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

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