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Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake, Spiced

A moist cake made with apple sauce, butter, sugar, flour, raisins or dates, nuts, cocoa, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Apple Sauce Cake, Spiced

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the warm apple sauce, butter, and granulated sugar until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, cloves, and cinnamon, mixing until smooth.

  3. Fold in the raisins or dates and chopped nuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick 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.

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 + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Apple sauce
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the cake tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cake a rich texture and tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic apple sauce to help the cake rise and lighten.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the cake a tender, browned crust.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda with the flour. Baking soda needs an acid to react and lift the batter; it should be evenly distributed through the flour so the rise is even and no bitter pockets form.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, sugar, flour, raisin, nuts, cocoa powder):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, sugar, flour, raisin, nuts, cocoa powder. 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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