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Dessert

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

A cake made with soaked dried apples, molasses, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, raisins, currants, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Dried Apple Fruit 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. Stew the soaked dried apples in molasses until cold.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix the stewed apples with sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, currants, flour, and chopped lemon.

  2. Pour the mixture into two loaf pans.

  3. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide the main fruit body and moisture, softened by soaking and stewing.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep caramel flavour that helps browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and lemon to help the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. A dense, fruit-heavy batter can look set on top while the centre is still wet. Testing the centre with a toothpick confirms it has baked through before the loaf cools.

Swap the apple

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

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

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