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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with brown sugar, flour, butter, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, wine, brandy, milk, baking soda, molasses, spices, almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the brown sugar and butter together for a few minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs until frothy and add them to the sugar mixture.

  3. Brown the flour and let it cool before adding it to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  5. Mix in the brandy and wine.

  6. Combine the flour with the sugar mixture.

  7. Add the molasses and spices.

  8. Stir in the dissolved soda mixture.

Bake

  1. Fold in the dredged fruit alternately just before pouring the batter into pans.

  2. Bake immediately; if using large loaves, bake for 2.5 to 3 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 lift as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets the crumb as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and wine to help the cake rise and brown.
Seeded raisins
Add moisture, chew and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after folding in the fruit. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic liquids, so a delay lets it lose its lift and can leave a dense, flat cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, raisin, wine, brandy. 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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