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Apple Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, raisins, currants, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. In the morning, stew the soaked apples in molasses until cold.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the cooled apple mixture with flour, butter, eggs, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and chopped lemon.

  2. Pour the batter into two loaf pans.

Bake

  1. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide moisture and tender fruit texture throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness that helps the cake brown.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples until cold. The apples must be cooled fully before being mixed with the eggs and butter; warm fruit can curdle or melt the fat and disturb the batter's structure and rise.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, flour, 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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