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Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A cake made with apple sauce, sugar, shortening, spices, raisins, and flour, baked at 300°F.

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

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 large bowl, cream the shortening and sugar together.

  2. Add the cooled apple sauce, salt, cinnamon, cloves, raisins, and vanilla; mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the crumb soft.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake tender and moist.
Shortening
Adds fat that coats flour particles and gives a tender texture.
Baking soda
Produces gas in the batter so the cake rises while baking.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops too much gluten from the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sauce, cinnamon, clove, raisin, vanilla, 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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