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Dessert

Dried Apple Cake

A moist cake made with dried apples, raisins, molasses, and spices.

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

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.

Prepare the apples

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. Chop the soaked apples finely.

  3. Boil the chopped apples in the molasses for 2 hours.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sour milk and eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the boiled apples and molasses mixture.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves.

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

  6. Fold in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. 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.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake tenderness and a rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lift the batter as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and deep sweetness to the cake.
Dried apples
Add fruit flavour and moisture after soaking and boiling.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda with the acidic ingredients. Baking soda needs an acid such as sour milk or molasses to produce the gas that lifts the batter. Mixing the dry ingredients in gradually and stirring only until combined keeps the batter light and avoids overworking the gluten in the flour.

Swap the apple

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

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

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