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Dessert

Cheap Fruit Cake

A sweet baked cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, milk, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cheap Fruit Cake

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 ↓

Cheap 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the milk and molasses until combined.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Fold in the currants, chopped raisins, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Currant + raisintop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and binding so the batter holds the fruit and sets as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep caramel flavour, and helps browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cake rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add moisture, sweetness, and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and mixing well after each one lets the butter and sugar emulsify and hold air. Adding them all at once can cause the batter to curdle or separate, which affects the final crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

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