Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, spices, and soaked in wine and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Black 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

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and brown sugar together until creamy.

  2. Stir in ¼ of the flour.

  3. Whip the eggs until very stiff and gradually add them to the mixture.

  4. Add the remaining flour in two parts, mixing well after each addition.

  5. Incorporate the Madeira wine, brandy, and spices into the batter.

  6. Gradually fold in the chopped fruit.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 4 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Whipped eggs add air and structure, helping the heavy batter rise and set.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruit gradually. Adding heavy fruit too quickly or without care can weigh the batter down and cause uneven texture. Folding gently keeps the air from the whipped eggs intact so the cake stays light enough to rise and bake evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, madeira wine, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes