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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with brown sugar, flour, raisins, currants, figs, butter, molasses, spices, eggs, currant jelly, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

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

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in molasses and melted currant jelly mixed with hot water.

  5. In another bowl, combine browned flour, baking soda, spices, and dried fruits.

  6. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet mixture, stirring until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for several hours until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. 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 in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour and sugar when creamed.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the batter.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweet flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet mixture. Adding the dry ingredients in portions and stirring just until combined keeps the batter smooth and helps prevent lumps and overmixing, which can make the cake tough.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, raisin, currant, fig, butter, 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 →

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