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Dessert

Best Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Best Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the molasses and brandy until combined.

  5. In another bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  7. Fold in the chopped raisins, currants, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and give it structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Stop stirring as soon as no dry streaks remain.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Currantthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

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