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Dessert

Coffee Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, spices, currants, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Coffee 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. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the brown sugar and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking powder in the molasses and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the allspice, beaten egg, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  5. Flour the currants and set aside.

  6. Add warm coffee to the mixture, then gradually add flour until smooth.

  7. Fold in the floured currants.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-greased pans.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 3 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the cake.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the floured currants. Flouring the currants keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the batter. Folding gently preserves the air and gas in the batter so the cake rises evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, molasses, allspice, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, allspice, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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