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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense, sweet cake made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, molasses, spices, flour, and dried fruits.

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs.

  3. Add the molasses with the baking soda dissolved in it.

  4. Mix the flour with the remaining ingredients.

  5. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the cake bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavour and dark colour to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and spices in the cake.

The step that matters

Slow baking. A low oven at 300°F bakes the dense, fruit-heavy batter evenly through, so the centre sets without the outside burning. Baking too hot risks a dark crust with a raw middle.

Swap the mace

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

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

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