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Dessert

Chocolate Fruit Cake

A moist chocolate cake with raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

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 ↓

Chocolate 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the flour, grated chocolate, raisins, currants, citron, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and baking powder.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, along with a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Grated unsweetened chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor and color to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped to stiff peaks hold air that leaveners and steam expand in the oven. Overmixing when folding knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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