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Dessert

Fruit Cake

Fruit cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, sorghum, sweet milk, fruit juice, baking soda, dried peaches, hickory nuts, raisins, currants, citron, cinnamon, cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sorghum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 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.

Make the batter

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

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

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

  4. Stir in the sorghum and sweet milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Fold in the dried peaches, hickory nuts, raisins, currants, citron, cinnamon, and cloves.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two large loaf pans.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or 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 + sorghumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sorghum to help the cake rise.
Sorghum
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep flavour to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, sorghum, milk, meat. 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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