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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, butter, sugar, sour milk, spices, and raisins.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Dried Apple 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.

Prepare the apples

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight and chop them finely in the morning.

  2. Cook the chopped apples in molasses until tender.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and sour milk.

  2. Add the cooked apples, baking soda, cinnamon, lemon extract, cloves, nutmeg, and raisins to the mixture.

  3. Stir until well combined and pour into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center 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.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide moist, chewy pieces and fruit flavour throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples in molasses until tender. Dried apples stay tough unless fully softened, and molasses can scorch on the base of the pan if heat is too high. Stir often and cook gently until the apples are soft before mixing, so they blend evenly into the batter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, molasses, butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, clove. 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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