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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, spices, currants, citron, molasses, and butter, baked slowly until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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 your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the mace, currants, chopped citron, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, molasses, and butter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is slightly stiffer than common cake.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  2. Bake slowly for two hours, or until a straw 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + sorghumtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 give the cake its structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sorghum molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep color to the cake.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure, which sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake slowly for two hours. Long, low heat lets the dense batter cook through evenly without the outside browning or drying before the center sets. Testing with a straw confirms doneness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, sorghum, molasses):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, sorghum, molasses. 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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