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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Cake

A steamed cake made with butter, raisins, brown sugar, citron, molasses, spices, eggs, flour, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the eggs, milk, molasses, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves; mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking soda, then gradually add to the wet mixture.

  4. Fold in the raisins and citron until evenly distributed.

Steam and dry

  1. Pour the batter into a pan and steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, place the cake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour to dry.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour and trapping air when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as the cake cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and dark colour with a slight acidity.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the batter and keeps the crumb moist and soft.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour mixture. Adding the flour and baking soda in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cinnamon, clove, egg. 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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