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Dessert

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, raisins, molasses, and spices, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the apples

  1. Drain the water from the soaked apples.

  2. Boil the apples with the molasses until well preserved.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs.

  3. Drain the syrup from the apples.

  4. Stir the syrup into the creamed mixture.

  5. Add the cold coffee, flour, baking soda, spices.

  6. Add the floured apples and raisins.

  7. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavors.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deep color to the cake and the cooked apples.
Baking soda
Lifts the batter as it reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee.
Dried apples
Soften in the molasses syrup, adding moisture and fruity sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F until done. A low, slow bake lets the dense, sugar-rich batter cook through evenly. Stopping early leaves the center gummy, while the high sugar content can scorch the edges if the oven runs too hot.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, coffee, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, coffee, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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