Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A moist cake made with applesauce, dried fruit, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Sauce Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Stir in the currants, raisins, and apple sauce.

  3. Add the salt, cinnamon, allspice, and flour, mixing until combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a loaf pan or small patty pans.

Bake

  1. Bake 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and a fruity flavor to the batter.
Dried currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, raisin, apple, sauce, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, raisin, apple, sauce, cinnamon, allspice. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes