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Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A baked cake made with unsweetened apple sauce, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the apple sauce, baking soda, sugar, and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in the raisins, flour, cinnamon, cloves, and salt until just mixed.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the apple sauce to help the cake rise.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and natural sweetness to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Once the flour is added, overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Mix only until the flour is just combined, leaving small lumps.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sugar, butter, raisin, flour, 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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