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Dessert

Cheap Fruit Cake

A simple raisin fruit cake made with butter, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, flour, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sour milk with the baking soda and salt dissolved in it.

  3. Mix in the flour combined with the spices, currants, and raisins.

  4. Mix thoroughly and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter for structure and adds sweetness and browning.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda into the sour milk. Baking soda only lifts the cake when it meets acid. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk spreads the reaction evenly, so the batter rises without pockets of soda or a bitter taste.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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