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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with sugar, butter, molasses, sour milk, flour, eggs, spices, raisins, dates, citron, candied peel, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the molasses, sour milk, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the flour, spices, and fruit to the butter mixture. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tube pan.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a creamy, aerated base with the butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense batter and fruit together.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour, spices, and fruit. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development controlled, so the dense batter stays tender rather than tough, and the fruit distributes evenly instead of sinking.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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