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Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A moist cake made with applesauce, raisins, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Sauce 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Dredge the chopped raisins lightly with flour and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the salt, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and beat it into the apple sauce, then let the mixture foam over the bowl with the other ingredients.

  5. Beat all ingredients thoroughly.

  6. Add the sifted flour and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased bread pan lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and natural fruit sweetness, with sourness that works against the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour apple sauce to lift the batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the apple sauce. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas for rising. Dissolving it well in warm water and mixing it evenly into the sour apple sauce spreads that reaction through the batter, so the cake rises evenly rather than in patches.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, raisin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, raisin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.

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