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Baking

Apple Sauce Cake

A moist cake made with apple sauce, flour, sugar, spices, nuts, raisins, butter, and cocoa.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Sauce 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

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

  2. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cornstarch, and cocoa powder until well mixed.

  3. Stir in the chopped nuts and raisins.

Mix and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the softened butter with the apple sauce.

  2. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and apple sauce mixture.

  3. Stir until well combined and pour into a greased baking pan.

  4. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic apple sauce to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Adds additional leavening so the cake rises evenly in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps carry flavor through the batter.
Apple sauce
Supplies moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the crumb soft.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb by diluting gluten in the flour, giving a tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir until well combined and pour into a greased baking pan.. Once the dry ingredients meet the wet mixture, overmixing develops gluten and makes the cake tough. Stir just until no dry streaks remain.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cocoa powder, 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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