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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, flour, dried fruit, spices, molasses, and almonds.

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

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Stone the raisins and clean the currants.

  2. Cut the mixed peel into small pieces.

  3. Blanch the almonds and cut them into fourths.

  4. Wash, dry and stone the dates, then cut them into four pieces.

  5. Sift a little flour over the fruit.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour and spices together.

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until smooth.

  3. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the molasses.

  5. Add the molasses mixture to the butter mixture.

  6. Stir in the flour mixture.

  7. Fold in the fruit.

Bake

  1. Line the pans with three thicknesses of buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven until a straw inserted comes out dry.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and nuts together.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise and lighten.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavour that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Fold in the fruit. Heavy fruit sinks and can clump if the batter is overmixed or the fruit is wet. Dusting it with flour helps it stay suspended and spread evenly through the cake while it bakes.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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