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Dessert

Fruit Loaf Cake

A loaf cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, milk, eggs, flour, spices, raisins, currants, and optional citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Loaf Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the cream of tartar. Make a well in the center and add the softened butter and molasses.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the milk with the baking soda and add to the mixture.

  4. Add the eggs, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg, and mix well with your hands.

Bake

  1. Flour the raisins and currants, then fold them into the batter last.

  2. Pour the batter into two loaf pans and bake for 2 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture, and color to the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour-coated fruit last. Flouring the raisins and currants helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom. Folding gently at the end avoids overmixing, which would toughen the crumb.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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