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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A steamed and baked cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, molasses, flour, spices, dried fruits, nuts, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 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 ↓

Fruit 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 the batter

  1. Mix a little of the flour with the fruits to coat them.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, butter, molasses, remaining flour, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  4. Fold in the egg whites last.

Steam

  1. Add the prepared fruits, nuts, and rum or brandy to the mixture.

  2. Steam the mixture for 5 hours.

Dry

  1. After steaming, dry the cake in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites add lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together once set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, treacly flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the batter rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites last. Folding gently keeps the whites' trapped air intact, so overmixing would deflate them and leave the cake denser.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, molasses, flour, cinnamon, allspice. 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 →

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