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Dessert

Breakfast Fruit Cakes

A sweet cake made with brown sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, flour, raisins, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Breakfast Fruit Cakes

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).

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the sour cream and beaten eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and raisins until combined.

  4. Pour the batter into greased iron pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Serve warm with coffee.

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. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the cakes and adds moisture and a caramel note.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, so overmixing can make the cakes tough. Stir only until no dry flour streaks remain, then pour the batter right away so the baking soda's rising power is not lost.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, egg, flour, raisin, 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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