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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, butter, sour cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Dried Apple Cake

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 filling

  1. Stew the chopped dried apples in molasses until well cooked.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, butter, sour cream, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in enough flour to form a batter.

  3. Add the cooked apples and spices, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 fruit body and chewy texture once softened and cooked down.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cake its structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift the batter and aid browning.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until well softened. Dried apples are firm and will stay tough and leathery in the batter if not fully stewed. Cooking them in molasses softens the fruit and lets it absorb liquid, so it bakes evenly into the crumb.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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