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Dessert

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

A cake made with dried apples, raisins, molasses, sour milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain and chop the apples finely.

  3. Simmer the chopped apples in molasses for two hours.

  4. When cool, add brown sugar and mixed spices.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in melted butter, beaten eggs, sour milk, and flour.

  2. Add the dissolved baking soda and lastly the raisins, dredging lightly with flour.

  3. Stir well and bake immediately in papered tins.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk and molasses to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep sweetness to the cake.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Once baking soda is dissolved and combined with the acidic sour milk, it starts releasing gas. Waiting before baking lets much of that lift escape, so the cake may come out flat and dense.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, molasses, milk, sugar, egg, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, molasses, milk, sugar, egg, butter, flour. 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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