Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Fruit Cake

A dense, sweet cake made with raisins, currants, citron, eggs, butter, sugar, flour, molasses, wine, brandy, spices, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Christmas 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. In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, citron, eggs, butter, brown sugar, flour, molasses, wine, brandy, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a large shallow granite roasting pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 3 to 4 hours, ensuring the cake does not bake hard but just dries out.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Raisin + molassestop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the fruit mixture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit together as the cake bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake for 3 to 4 hours at low heat. Baking too hot or too long dries the cake out and makes it hard, while too short a bake leaves the eggs and flour underset in the center. Low, steady heat sets the batter gently and lets moisture evaporate slowly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes