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Dessert

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

A moist cake made from soaked dried apples, molasses, spices, eggs, butter, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Dried Apple Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Soak the dried apples in water overnight.

  2. In the morning, combine the soaked apples, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in a pot.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours until reduced to one third of the original quantity.

Make the batter

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs, butter, baking soda dissolved in water, and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  2. Pour the batter into two loaf pans and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide fruit body and flavor that soften and sweeten the cake as they cook down.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor while moistening the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the cake rise and lighten.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.

The step that matters

Reducing the apple and molasses mixture. Cooking slowly for 2 hours concentrates the mixture and softens the apples. Letting it cool before adding eggs and baking soda matters, because hot mixtures can scramble eggs and weaken the baking soda's reaction.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, egg, butter, flour. 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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