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Dessert

Molasses Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, flour, eggs, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Molasses 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.

Make the batter

  1. Combine molasses, light brown sugar, and butter in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Set the mixture aside to cool.

  4. Add enough flour to make a thick batter.

  5. Mix in the eggs and beat well.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron, tossing them with 2 heaping teaspoons of flour.

  2. Pour the batter into a prepared pan.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for nearly two 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavour to the cake.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the cake stay tender and soft.
Butter
Adds fat, giving richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Raisins
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bits of fruit that moisten and flavour the crumb.

The step that matters

Tossing the fruit in flour before folding it in. Dusting the raisins, currants and citron with flour helps them stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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