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Dessert

Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, flour, butter, eggs, spices, and leavening.

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

Apple Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash the dried apples and soak them in water overnight.

  2. In the morning, chop the apples finely and boil them in the molasses slowly for 1 hour.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Once the mixture is partly cool, stir in the butter and the other ingredients.

  2. Pour the batter into deep pans and bake until done.

Finish

  1. Frost the cake as desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide fruit flavour and moist, tender bulk throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep, rich colour to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Cooling the molasses and apple mixture before adding butter. Stirring butter and leavening into a very hot mixture can melt the fat and cause the batter to lose its lift. Letting it partly cool first keeps the fat intact and the rise even.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, flour, butter, egg, cream, cinnamon, clove):

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

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

More apple cake recipes

Dried 62Dutch 43German 12Molasses 9Filling 8Danish 4 See all 117 →

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