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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense, sweet cake made with brown sugar, brown flour, butter, molasses, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, figs, almonds, cider, vanilla, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

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 brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add the molasses and eggs, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the brown flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and pepper.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, figs, and almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the cake a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Brown flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Baking time and temperature. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-filled batter cook through without the outside burning. Testing the center with a toothpick confirms the cake is fully set before cooling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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