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Dessert

Poor Max's Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with maple sugar, sour milk, raisins, molasses, and almonds.

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

Poor Max's 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the maple sugar and sour milk until combined.

Make the batter

  1. Add the flour, raisins, molasses, and butter; stir until smooth.

  2. Mix in the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and almonds.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and gives a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, lifting the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Maple sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda. Baking soda needs the acid in the sour milk to react and release gas. Adding it late or leaving the batter to stand too long can weaken the rise, so it should go into the batter promptly and be mixed in evenly before baking.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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

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