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Baking

Cheap Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with raisins, nuts, flour, butter, sugar, water, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cheap Fruit Cake

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheap 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.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the raisins, sugar, butter, and water together until the raisins are soft.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the flour, baking soda, nuts, and spices.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Soften in the boiling mixture and add moisture and chewy sweetness to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic fruit and spices to help the cake rise and brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, rich flavor that contrasts with the soft crumb.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the flour and baking soda. Adding baking soda to a very hot, wet mixture can cause it to react too quickly and lose lift, so cooling first helps the cake rise evenly.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, butter, flour, allspice, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, butter, flour, allspice, clove, nutmeg. 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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