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Dessert

Sour Apple Sauce Cake

A moist cake made with apple sauce, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Sour 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in cold apple sauce and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Add chopped raisins, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Gradually mix in flour until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into greased cake pan and bake 30‑40 minutes or 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for aeration and adds sweetness that aids browning.
Apple sauce
Supplies moisture and apple flavor, keeping the cake tender and moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the apple sauce to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in flour until just combined. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Stopping once the flour is just combined keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

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