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Dessert

Premium Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with butter, eggs, brown sugar, raisins, citron, figs, molasses, spices, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Premium 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 brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Stir in the molasses, chopped raisins, chopped citron, and chopped figs.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine 4 cups of flour with baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, spices, and nutmeg.

  6. Dredge the fruit in ½ cup of the flour mixture.

  7. Fold the flour mixture into the batter gently.

  8. Add the strong coffee and mix until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  4. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture and a deep caramel flavor.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and brown.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a robust, slightly acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit in flour. Coating the raisins, citron and figs in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Datesfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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