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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, molasses, raisins, brown sugar, eggs, butter, sour milk, flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Dried Apple Cake

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 dried apples overnight in lukewarm water.

  2. In the morning, drain the water and chop the apples finely.

  3. Cook the chopped apples in molasses until slightly softened, then let cool.

  4. In a large bowl, combine the cooled apple mixture with chopped raisins.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, cream together brown sugar, eggs, and butter.

  2. Add sour milk to the mixture and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the apple and raisin mixture into the batter.

  4. Sift together flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then add to the wet ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2.5 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Provide fruit flavour and moist, chewy pieces throughout the cake.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavour that helps the cake brown.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins and starch set when baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Mix until just combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Overmixing toughens the cake, so stop as soon as the flour disappears into the batter.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, raisin, sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, sugar, egg, butter, milk, 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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