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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense, spiced cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, dried fruit, spices, and fortified wine, baked and stored for weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

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

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the currants, raisins, citron, almonds, orange peel, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it along with the alum to the mixture.

  7. Pour in the brandy, port wine, and molasses, and mix until combined.

Bake and age

  1. Transfer the batter to a greased cake pan and bake for 4 hours.

  2. Let the cake cool, then wrap it and store it for at least 6 weeks before using.

  3. Once a week, give the cake a brandy bath to keep it moist.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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 and add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lighten the batter and aid browning.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness.
Currants
Add chewy fruitiness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking soda with alum. Baking soda needs an acid to react and lift the batter; the acidic molasses and alum supply it. Dissolve the soda fully in water first so it mixes evenly and does not leave bitter, soapy pockets or dense patches in the crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, raisin, almond, orange. 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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