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Dessert

Apple Fruit Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 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 apples

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. In the morning, stew the soaked apples in 1 cup of molasses.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, grated nutmeg, salt, brown sugar, eggs, and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the stewed apples, chopped raisins, ground cloves, and citron to the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan and 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 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 fruit flavour and moisture once stewed and folded into the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and softens the apples when stewed.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cake structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples in molasses. The apples must be soaked and then stewed until fully tender, otherwise they stay firm and release too little moisture into the batter, leaving pieces that are hard and unevenly cooked inside the cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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