Name: Apple Sauce Cake
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon powdered sugar; 10 ounces butter; 10 ounces lard; 8 eggs; 2 tablespoons flour; ⅓ ounce baking powder; 10 ounces apple sauce; Vanilla extract to taste

Why it works: Apple and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,501 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Sauce Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the powdered sugar, butter, lard, and eggs until very light and fluffy.
Add the apple sauce and vanilla extract, stirring to combine.
Sift the flour and baking powder together, then mix into the batter until smooth.
Ensure the apple sauce is cooled and strained to remove any seeds or foreign substances.

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.

Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,501 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,241 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the apple

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

Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, sauce, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.