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Dessert

Black Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, coffee sugar, eggs, flour, molasses, coffee, raisins, currants, citron, almonds, figs, baking soda, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Black 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. Line the bottom and sides of the pans with greased paper.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the molasses and coffee.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

  5. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

  6. Flour all the fruit thoroughly before adding it to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they are beaten in.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and add tenderness and flavor.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lift the batter and make it lighter.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and sweetness to the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark color to the batter.

The step that matters

Flour all the fruit thoroughly before adding it to the mixture.. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan during baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, coffee, sugar, egg, flour, molasses, 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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