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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A steamed and baked cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, spices, grape jelly, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your steamer.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the eggs, butter, sugar, and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the raisins, currants, citron, molasses, nutmeg, mace, cloves, jelly, wine, and brandy. Mix well.

  4. If the dough is too wet, add more flour as needed.

Steam and bake

  1. Transfer the dough into pans, ensuring they are tightly covered.

  2. Steam the cakes for 2 hours.

  3. After steaming, bake the cakes in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 the cake sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep color, and a rich, slightly acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Adjusting the flour in the dough. Dried fruit and liquids change how wet the batter is, and too much liquid makes a dense, gummy cake. Add flour gradually until the dough is firm enough to hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

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

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