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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, raisins, currants, dates, figs, nuts, citrus, spices, molasses, whiskey, and cherry butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 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

  1. Soak the spices in whiskey for at least 2 hours.

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

  3. Prepare four square brick pans, ideally not larger than 4 pounds each.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl until well mixed.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, sweet cream, whiskey, spices, cherry butter, and molasses to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the flour, mixing well.

  5. Dredge the chopped fruit in a little flour and fold it into the batter a few handfuls at a time.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for about 2 hours, checking for doneness.

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. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  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 the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together.
Currants
Add moisture, chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.
Black molasses
Adds depth, moisture and a dark caramel-like sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the chopped fruit. Fruit is heavy and sinks to the bottom of the batter. Dredging it lightly in flour helps it cling and distribute evenly, and adding it a few handfuls at a time keeps the batter from being overworked or deflated.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, raisin, dates, fig. 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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