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Dessert

Apple Sauce Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, apple sauce, raisins, spices, walnuts, flour, and an egg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter, sugar, and apple sauce with the baking soda.

  2. Stir in the raisins, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, walnut meats, flour, and egg until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic apple sauce to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Apple sauce
Supplies moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the crumb soft.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Cream the butter, sugar, and apple sauce with the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas, and the apple sauce supplies it. Creaming well distributes the soda evenly so the cake rises uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the apple

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

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

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