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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, butter, browned flour, brown sugar, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, ginger, spices, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Brown the flour in the oven.

  3. Mix the ginger into the molasses.

  4. Steep the mixed spices in the cider overnight.

  5. Prepare a baking pan by greasing it and dusting with flour.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, butter, brown sugar, browned flour, raisins, currants, citron, and molasses.

  2. Add the steeped cider and spices to the mixture.

  3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat in the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to browning.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. A long bake lets the center set fully; pulling the cake early leaves wet batter in the middle, while overbaking dries the fruit-heavy crumb.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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