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Dessert

Christmas Fruit Cake

A dense, spiced cake made with raisins, currants, butter, sugar, eggs, molasses, and spices, baked at 300°F for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

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

Make the batter

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, and butter together.

  2. Break in the eggs and beat well.

  3. Add the brown sugar, brandy, wine (if using), cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, mixed peel, and molasses.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually add the flour and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for three 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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

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

  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 they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and acids to lighten the batter slightly as it bakes.
Dark molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep colour and flavour.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking soda in warm water. Baking soda must be fully dissolved before it goes into the batter so it disperses evenly. Uneven distribution leaves pockets that rise unevenly or taste bitter. Mixing it into the batter in one small liquid portion helps it spread through the dense mixture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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