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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with browned flour, butter, sugar, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, figs, molasses, spices, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 ↓

Black 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 browned flour, butter, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the currants, raisins, citron, blanched almonds, figs, and eggs to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the molasses, whisky or brandy, mace, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the whisky and add it to the mixture along with the baking powder.

Fold and bake

  1. Dust the fruit with flour to prevent sinking, then fold it into the batter.

  2. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 4 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crumb a tender texture.
Browned flour
Provides structure and a deep, toasty flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the baked cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a treacle-like sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dust the fruit with flour before folding it in. Flour coating helps keep heavy fruit suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking, so the cake bakes evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, almond, fig, egg. 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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