Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A cake made with apple sauce, flour, sugar, spices, raisins, nuts, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Apple Sauce Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift flour, soda, sugar, cloves, chocolate, cinnamon, and corn starch into a bowl.

  2. Sift the dry ingredients into two cups of apple sauce; stir well, and add one cup of floured raisins, one-half cup of nuts, and one-half cup of melted butter.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly in a shallow pan.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

957Calories
16 gProtein
25 gFat
170 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Apple Sauce1 medium (182g)95
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic apple sauce to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown during baking.
Apple sauce
Supplies moisture, keeping the cake tender and moist.
Melted butter
Adds fat that gives a soft crumb and rich flavour.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting the flour's gluten-forming proteins.

The step that matters

Bake slowly in a shallow pan. A slow bake lets the thick, moist batter cook through to the centre before the outside over-browns. Baking too hot can set the crust while the middle stays wet and sunken.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, clove, chocolate, cinnamon, corn, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, clove, chocolate, cinnamon, corn, sauce. 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

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipes