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Dessert

Dark Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with dried fruits, candied fruits, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dark Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C).

  2. Line two large loaf pans with aluminum foil.

  3. Soak the dried fruits in boiling water for 2 hours.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and cloves.

Make and bake the cake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat together the brown sugar, lemon extract, eggs, molasses, and milk.

  2. Add the flour mixture, dried fruits, and nuts to the wet ingredients.

  3. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans.

  4. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pear + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Fig + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel note to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and brown.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, pear, apricot, raisin, flour, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, pear, apricot, raisin, flour, cinnamon, allspice. 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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