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Dessert

An Excellent and Economical Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, sour milk, raisins, currants, citron, and spices, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

An Excellent and Economical 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.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash the currants in water and drain them in a colander.

  2. Separate the raisins and lightly flour them.

  3. Cut the citron into very thin pieces, about half an inch square.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together, then stir in the sour milk.

  2. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into the butter mixture and beat until smooth.

  3. Add the spices, raisins, currants, and citron, stirring them through the batter.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake tin, pour in the batter, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for one and a half 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour and creaming air into the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while keeping the crumb moist.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the finished cake.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sifted flour and baking soda. Beating the batter too long after adding flour develops gluten and can make the cake tough. Mixing just until smooth keeps the crumb tender while the soda still has acid to react with.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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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