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Dessert

Apple Fruit-cake

A cake made with soaked apples, molasses, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, baking soda, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Fruit-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Chop the soaked apples finely.

  2. Boil the apples in molasses for 2 hours or more.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the milk, eggs, and baking soda to the mixture.

  3. Stir in spices and enough flour to make a stiff batter, similar to pound cake.

  4. Fold in the boiled apples and optional citron.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Dried apples
Provide the fruit bulk and tender texture once softened and boiled in molasses.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark colour and a rich, slightly sharp flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a light structure when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Add structure and binding so the batter holds together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cake rise and darken.

The step that matters

Boiling the apples in molasses. The apples must cook long enough to soften fully, since they will not get tender once baked into a stiff batter. Keep the heat gentle so the molasses does not scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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