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Baking

Fruit Cake

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

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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the spices in brandy for a little while before mixing.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

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

  3. Stir in the flour, currants, raisins, citron, molasses, and soaked spices.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for four 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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Currants
Provide moisture, chewiness, and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking low and slow for four hours. A long, low bake at 300°F lets the heavy, fruit-filled batter cook through to the center without the outside burning. Too high a heat would set the crust before the interior is done.

Swap the currant

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

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

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