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Dessert

Fruit Cake

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

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the molasses and dissolved baking soda.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the remaining ingredients.

  5. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture and mix thoroughly.

  6. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for six 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fruit and batter together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Bake for six hours at 300°F. A dense, fruit-heavy batter needs a long, low bake so the center sets fully before the outside over-browns or dries. Checking doneness with a skewer helps prevent a gummy or dry result.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, raisin, currant, nutmeg. 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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