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Dessert

Molasses Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, flour, eggs, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Molasses 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. In a saucepan, boil the molasses, light brown sugar, and butter together. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Add enough flour to thicken the mixture like a pound cake. Stir in the beaten eggs.

  3. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron mixed with 2 tablespoons of flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for nearly 2 hours.

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

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the cake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the cake its body so the fruit stays suspended.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Adding flour to thicken the batter. The batter must be thick enough, like pound cake, to hold the heavy raisins, currants, and citron evenly. A thin batter lets the fruit sink to the bottom while baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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