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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, flour, sour cream, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

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 ↓

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

  3. Add the molasses and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with the sour cream or milk.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream with the butter to create a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and sour cream to help the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the cake.

The step that matters

Alternating the flour mixture with the sour cream or milk. Adding flour in portions alternated with liquid keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified, so the cake bakes evenly with a fine texture instead of becoming dense or tough from overmixing.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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