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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, molasses, coffee, raisins, currants, citron, spices, baking soda, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,070 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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.

Mix and rest

  1. In the morning, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, molasses, and coffee together.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, citron, cloves, cassia, nutmeg, baking soda, flour, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand until the afternoon.

Bake

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

  2. Bake the cake with a slow, steady fire until done.

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. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Bake with a slow, steady fire. A low, even oven heat lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through to the centre before the outside over-browns or dries out.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, molasses, coffee, raisin, clove. 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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