Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, citron, nuts, jelly, rose-water, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter, then mix in the sugar and molasses.

  3. Beat the egg whites separately and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Sift the baking powder into the flour and gradually add it to the mixture.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Stir in the raisins, currants, citron, nuts, jelly, rose-water or fruit juice, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Dust the fruit with 1 cup of flour to prevent sinking.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  4. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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
Whipped whites fold in air for lift, while the yolks add richness and structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and suspended fruit together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dusting the fruit with flour. Heavy fruit sinks to the bottom of a thick batter during baking. A light coating of flour helps the pieces grip the batter so they stay suspended as it sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes