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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, preserved lemon, molasses, sour milk, spices, flour, baking soda, brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and dark brown sugar.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and ground mace.

  3. Mix in the cooking molasses and sour milk.

  4. Incorporate the beaten yolks of the eggs and the brandy.

  5. Stir in the sifted flour alternately with the beaten egg whites.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda and mix it in thoroughly.

  7. Toss the fruit with 2 heaping tablespoons of flour, then fold it into the batter.

Bake and store

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

  2. Butter two common-sized baking tins and line them with buttered parchment paper.

  3. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake for 2 hours.

  4. Let the cake cool in the pan, then store it in a tight can or stone jar.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten yolks and whites add structure and lift to the rich, heavy batter.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Dark brown sugar
Adds moisture, sweetness and a deep caramel flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to leaven the batter.
Cooking molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding the fruit in lightly with its flour coating. Tossing the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended instead of sinking to the bottom of the batter. Heavy fruit folded in too vigorously can deflate the batter and make the cake dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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