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Dessert

Black Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the raisins in brandy overnight.

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

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

  3. Stir in the flour, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2 to 4 hours 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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Currants
Add chewy fruit pieces and moisture throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture, and plump up when soaked in brandy.

The step that matters

Baking time and doneness. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through without burning the outside. Testing with a toothpick near the earliest time helps avoid a dry cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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