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Dessert

Cheap Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, sour cream, spices, raisins, citrus peel, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cheap Fruit Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheap 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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sour cream.

  4. Mix in the baking soda, ground cloves, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Fold in the raisins and mixed citrus peel.

  6. Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff enough to hold its shape.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that coats flour and aerates when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff. Adding flour in small amounts lets you judge the stiffness of the batter. Too much flour at once can make the cake dense and tough, while too little leaves it too loose to hold its shape.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.

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