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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, flour, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, raisins, currants, citron, figs, lemon zest and juice, and spices.

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

Prepare

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

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the molasses and sour milk, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add to the mixture.

  4. Sift the flour with baking soda and spices.

  5. Mix the flour and fruit alternately into the wet ingredients.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3 ½ 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lift the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep color to the cake.
Sour milk
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and contributes moisture.

The step that matters

Bake for the full time until a toothpick comes out clean. A dense, fruit-heavy batter needs a long, low bake so the center sets fully. Pulling it early can leave a gummy middle, while overbaking dries the edges.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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

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