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Dessert

Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sifted flour to the mixture.

  3. Whip the eggs to a fine froth and mix them into the creamed butter and sugar.

  4. Stir in the currants, raisins, citron, and crushed almonds.

  5. Add the molasses, ginger, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for five 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped eggs add air and structure, helping the heavy batter hold together and rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper flavour.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its set structure.
Currants
Dried fruit that adds chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Baking in a slow oven for five hours. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through evenly without the outside burning before the centre sets.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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