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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, brandy, flour, spices, raisins, currants, and citron, steamed then baked.

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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses, eggs, and brandy. Mix well.

Add the flour and fruit

  1. Sift in the flour and mace.

  2. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

  3. Rub ½ pound of flour with the fruit before adding.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam the mixture in a dish for 2 hours.

  2. After steaming, bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and moisture, and it helps the crumb brown.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during cooking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Steam before baking. Steaming cooks the dense batter gently with moist heat so it sets through without drying out. Only then should dry oven heat be used to brown the surface; skipping or rushing the steam leaves the centre underdone.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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