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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, spices, and a mixture of raisins, currants, almonds, citron, pineapple, brandy, molasses, grape jelly, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, mace, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Sift the flour mixture over the fruit and nuts.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the brandy, molasses, and grape jelly.

  4. Fold in the prepared fruit and nut mixture until well combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 2 to 2.5 hours or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and deep caramel-like sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the fruit and nut mixture. Heavy fruit and nuts can sink to the bottom if the batter is too thin or they are over-mixed. Folding gently keeps them evenly distributed while preserving the batter's air.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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