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Dessert

Egoless Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made from dried apples, molasses, butter, sugar, sour milk, spices, and flour, baked without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Egoless Dried Apple Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Soak the chopped dried apples in water overnight.

  2. Cook the soaked apples in molasses until soft.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the softened butter, sugar, and sour milk.

  2. Add the cooked apples, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, lemon extract, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Stir in flour until the batter is stiff.

  4. If desired, fold in the raisins.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide moist, chewy pieces and fruity bulk throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and helps the cake stay soft.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to leaven the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake.

The step that matters

Stir in flour until the batter is stiff. Once flour is added, gluten begins to form, so overmixing can make the cake tough. Stir just until the batter is stiff and evenly combined.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, molasses, butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, molasses, butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon, clove. 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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