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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples stewed in molasses, butter, brown sugar, flour, baking soda, eggs, and optional raisins or citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Dried Apple Cake

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 ↓

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.

  2. In the morning, stew the soaked apples in 1 cup of molasses.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the stewed apples, raisins, and citron if using.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Dried apples
Add moisture and fruit flavor as they soften when stewed in molasses.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and dark flavor, and its acidity works with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor, and creaming it traps air in the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the flour mixture gradually and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.

“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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