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Dessert

Apple Sauce Spice Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, apple sauce, flour, spices, raisins, and currants.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Stir in the strained apple sauce.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot apple sauce or add a little hot water if the apple sauce is cold.

  5. Add the cream of tartar, flour, raisins, currants, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  6. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with the baking soda to lighten the crumb and stabilize the batter.
Butter or shortening
Coats flour particles and traps air when creamed with sugar, giving the cake a tender texture.
Sugar
Creams with the fat to trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Apple sauce
Provides moisture and sweetness, keeping the cake soft and tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the hot apple sauce. Baking soda needs moisture and acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it evenly in warm liquid spreads the reaction through the batter, so the cake rises evenly. Cold apple sauce may not dissolve it well, which is why the recipe adds hot water in that case.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, apple, sauce, flour, cream, 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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