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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, spices, molasses, brandy, and a graham flour base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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).

  2. To prevent the cake from baking too hard on the bottom, prepare a thick batter of graham flour and water, and spread it an inch deep in the baking tin.

  3. Line the tin with oiled paper on the bottom and sides before pouring in the cake batter.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and spices, and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the molasses and brandy.

  5. Fold in the currants, raisins, and citron until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Bake for several hours 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the rich batter together.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and carries flavor through the batter.
Granulated sugar
Creams with the butter to trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas and lighten the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow until a toothpick comes out clean. A large, dense fruit cake needs gentle, long heat so the center sets without the outside over-browning or drying. Checking doneness with a toothpick confirms the middle has set.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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