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Dessert

Fruit Cake

Fruit cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, raisins, citron, nutmeg, spices.

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 ↓

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

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and molasses.

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

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

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins, citron, nutmeg, and spices.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, creaming with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter hold the fruit and set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients. Mixing flour gradually and stirring only until combined keeps the batter from overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, flour, egg, cream, raisin. 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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White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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