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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, sour cream, eggs, baking soda, spices, grape juice, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plain 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Stir in the sour cream and grape juice.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves.

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

  7. Fold in nutmeg, raisins, and currants to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Cinnamon + grapetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for a light structure and adds sweetness and browning.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Eggs
Add structure, binding, and moisture to the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tenderness, and mild acidity to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and grape juice to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Mixing until just combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, cream, egg, cinnamon, clove. 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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