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Dessert

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) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

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 shortening and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the apple sauce and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the sifted pastry flour and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.

  5. Fold in the halved raisins and spices to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Shortening
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and keeps the cake soft and tender.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure of the cake with its lower protein content for a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sauce, flour, raisin. 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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