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Dried Apple Cake

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

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the dried apples in cold water overnight.

  2. Chop the soaked apples very fine.

  3. In a pot, combine the chopped apples and syrup or molasses, and stew until soft but not pulpy.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then mix in the flour, butter, eggs, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and spices.

  5. If desired, add raisins and currants.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, syrup, flour, butter, egg, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, syrup, flour, butter, egg, sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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