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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, sour milk, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, spices, and frosted with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar, and molasses.

  3. Add sour milk and egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  5. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet mixture.

  6. Fold in raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Finish and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold egg whites into batter.

  3. Pour batter into greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a set structure.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas for rising.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with the baking soda to help leavening and stabilize the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, milk, egg, cream, flour. 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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