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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with brown sugar, butter, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, citron, spices, molasses, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Beat the eggs separately.

  3. Add the yolks to the butter and sugar mixture along with the molasses. Stir well.

Add flour and fruit

  1. Gradually add half of the flour and half of the egg whites.

  2. Stir in the remaining flour and egg whites.

  3. Fold in the spices, currants, raisins (dusted with flour), citron, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4.5 to 5 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide structure and set as the batter bakes, and lift the crumb when whites are folded in.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure and holds the fruit in place.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour particles and carrying flavour.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the batter, adds moisture, and helps the cake brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, a deep colour, and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and egg whites. Add flour in portions and stop mixing once it is combined. Overmixing develops too much gluten, making the cake dense and tough. Gentle folding keeps the air from the whites and spreads the heavy fruit evenly without crushing the batter.

Swap the currant

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

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

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