Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, molasses, eggs, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, raisins, citron, almonds, baking powder, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, sweet milk, and molasses with a little of the flour.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture, along with more flour.

  4. Stir in the ginger, cinnamon, cloves, raisins, citron, and rolled almonds.

  5. If using sour milk, dissolve the baking soda in it and add to the mixture.

  6. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites and the remaining flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3 hours, placing a pan of water over the cake to prevent burning.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten and folded in, lighten its structure.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to help the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the cake's crust.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring would deflate it and leave a denser cake.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk, molasses, egg, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes