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Dessert

Black Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, spices, molasses, whiskey, black wine, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Black Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

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

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

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

  6. In a small bowl, combine the black molasses and baking soda, then add to the batter.

  7. Stir in the whiskey and black wine.

  8. Flour the raisins, currants, and citron, then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 6 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. 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through the fat creamed with the sugar.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift and lighten the batter.
Black molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and sweetness with a slight acidity.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Flour the raisins, currants, and citron before folding. Light flouring coats the fruit so it is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter during baking and gets distributed evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, 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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