Skip to main content
Main

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with raisins, currants, figs, citron, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, molasses, lemon juice, grape juice, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a baking pan with paper.

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, figs, citron, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, molasses, juice from the lemons, grape juice, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven for 3 to 3½ 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. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during the long bake.
Raisins
Supply moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake low and long. A low oven temperature over several hours cooks the dense batter through without scorching the outside. Rushing with higher heat can leave the centre raw while the surface over-browns.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes