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Dessert

German Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

German 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Dredge the chopped fruit with flour.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the molasses and fruit juice.

  4. Combine the flour and spices, then fold into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3¾ 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. 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 the cake bakes and sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the batter brown as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it sets.
Orleans molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture and a dark colour to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredge the chopped fruit with flour. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom during the long bake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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