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Dessert

Apple Fruit Cake

A baked cake with sugar, shortening, raisins, dates, spices, flour, apple sauce, 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 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar and shortening until well combined.

  3. Add raisins, dates, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg; stir to combine.

  4. Gradually add flour and mix until incorporated.

  5. Fold in apple sauce and butter last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the spices.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and apple flavour, keeping the cake tender.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Dates
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in apple sauce and butter last. Adding the wet ingredients after the flour is fully mixed in keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing once flour is hydrated develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Datesthe original

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

More apple fruit cake recipes

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