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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, butter, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, baking soda, eggs, spices, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Dried Apple Cake

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 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. Chop the soaked apples and combine them with molasses in a covered pan.

  3. Stew the mixture until it becomes clear and dark.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the stewed apples, raisins, currants, flour, baking soda, eggs, cloves, cinnamon, coffee, and nutmeg. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  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

Dried apples
Provide the bulk and moist, tender fruit throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and moisture to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as it sets.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift and lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Stew the apple and molasses mixture. The mixture must cook until clear and dark so the apples soften and their flavor concentrates. Under-stewed apples stay firm and can make the cake wet or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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