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Dessert

Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. 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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  4. Gradually add the beaten eggs, wine, brandy, and molasses to the butter mixture.

  5. Stir in the spices steeped in molasses for 20-30 minutes.

  6. Fold in the flour mixture, raisins, currants, almonds, and citron.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean, about 2-3 hours.

  3. Let the cake cool gradually in the oven.

  4. Ice the cake when it is completely cold.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 the cake sets.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and a darker color to the cake.

The step that matters

Cool gradually in the oven. Cooling slowly in the oven lets the cake finish setting without sudden temperature changes, which helps prevent cracking and sinking in a dense, heavily fruited cake.

“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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