Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Fruit Cake

A spiced fruit cake made with flour, milk, butter, molasses, sugar, eggs, and dried fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Spice Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in the molasses.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Pour in the remaining milk and add the beaten eggs.

  5. Fold in the currants, raisins, chopped citron, and chopped dates.

  6. Add enough sifted flour to make a stiff batter.

  7. Flavor the batter with ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes, 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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 texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the cake rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a light, creamed texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the molasses. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the allspice

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

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

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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes