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Dessert

Chocolate Fruit Cake

A chocolate cake with raisins and currants baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chocolate 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 your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the eggs separately, then combine them and mix with the sugar.

  3. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together twice.

  4. Cream the butter and mix it well with the egg mixture.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  6. Pour boiling water over the chocolate to dissolve it, then add to the batter.

  7. Seed the raisins, wash, pick, and dry the currants, then dredge them with flour.

Make the cake

  1. Gently fold the floured fruits into the cake batter.

  2. Grease a cake mold well, pour in the batter, and bake until thoroughly 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour and shortening the texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.

The step that matters

Fold the floured fruits in gently. Overmixing once the flour is in develops gluten and deflates the batter, so the fruit should be folded in just until evenly distributed to keep the cake light.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, milk, raisin, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, milk, raisin, cream. 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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