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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with butter, molasses, brown sugar, flour, coffee, eggs, spices, raisins, currants, citron, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Black Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Stir in the cold coffee and eggs, mixing until combined.

  4. Add the cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and baking soda, and mix thoroughly.

  5. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared loaf pans.

  2. Bake for 3 hours or 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense batter together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat in the creamed batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. A long bake of a dense, fruit-heavy batter can dry out the outside or leave the center underbaked. Checking the center with a toothpick shows whether the middle has set.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, sugar, flour, coffee, egg, 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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