Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, lemon peel, almonds, eggs, spices, molasses, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. 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.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the raisins, currants, citron, lemon peel, and cracked almonds in ½ cup of flour, ⅓ cup of brandy, and ⅓ cup of wine for about 30 minutes.

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and dark brown sugar.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the hot water, baking soda, cassia buds, flour, mace, cinnamon, coriander seeds, allspice, cloves, and Orleans molasses.

  4. Fold in the boiled fruit mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased dripping pan.

  2. Bake for several hours until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Almond + cassiatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 creamed with the sugar.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and depth of flavor from its molasses content.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the boiled fruit mixture. The fruit is soaked and wet, so folding it in gently keeps the batter from deflating and spreads the fruit evenly without overmixing the flour, which would toughen the cake.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, raisin, currant, lemon, almond, egg. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes