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Dessert

Royal English Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, coffee, molasses, brandy, orange extract, spices, raisins, currants, citron, almonds, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Royal English 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. Mix the butter, sugar, eggs, and flour as directed for pound cake.

  2. Add the spices, coffee, molasses, brandy, and orange extract.

  3. Dust the fruit and almonds with flour and mix them in.

Bake

  1. Line the molds with buttered paper.

  2. Fill the molds almost full with the mixture.

  3. Bake for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the cake.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Coffee + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit in the cake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb and browning.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fill the molds almost full, then bake low and slow. Fruit cakes are dense and rise little, so an overfilled mold can overflow, and baking too hot can scorch the outside before the centre sets. A long, low bake lets the heavy batter cook through evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

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