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Apple Sauce Cake (Mrs Mattice)
— Mrs. Mattice
One and one-half cups stewed apples, one cup sugar, one-half cup melted butter, two cups flour, one teaspoon cinnamon, one-half teaspoon nutmeg, one cup chopped raisins, one large teaspoon saleratus dissolved in apple sauce.
— Miss Jennie Titus
A plain community-cookbook cake: no eggs, no milk, and no baking instructions at all. The applesauce does the work of both liquid and binder, so its consistency decides the batter.
- SaleratusSaleratus was the period leavening, potassium bicarbonate in earlier use and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) later; substitute baking soda. "One large teaspoon" means a heaped rather than a level one, so somewhere above a level teaspoon; that is a heavy dose for two cups of flour, and a level teaspoon gives a cleaner flavor with less soapy aftertaste.
- The hingeThe soda is dissolved in the applesauce, not the flour, and it begins reacting with the fruit acid immediately. Mix the batter quickly once the two meet and get it into a preheated oven; a batter left standing on the counter will fall flat.
- Stewed applesStewed apples were often unsweetened and coarse, closer to chunky homemade sauce than to smooth commercial applesauce. Use unsweetened sauce; sweetened jarred sauce will push an already sweet cake over the edge.
- ButterHalf a cup of melted butter is one stick.
- RaisinsChop them as directed and toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in, which helps keep them from sinking. Period raisins usually still contained seeds and were seeded and chopped by hand; modern seedless dark raisins need only a rough chop.
- Oven and panNothing is stated. Bake at 350F in a greased 8-inch square pan or a loaf pan, 40 to 50 minutes for the square and closer to an hour for the loaf, until a tester comes out clean.
- No leavening backupThere is no egg and no baking powder, so the soda alone lifts it. Expect a dense, moist, close-crumbed cake rather than a light layer cake, and do not be tempted to overbeat the flour in.
- YieldAbout nine squares, or one small loaf. It is arguably better on the second day.
- Two namesThe page carries both Mrs. Mattice and Miss Jennie Titus. Which name belongs to this recipe is unclear: the leading name may be the credit for the preceding recipe, with Miss Jennie Titus the contributor here. Either way, treat it as one recipe, not two.
Applesauce cake belongs to the family of eggless, milkless "fruit" cakes that spread through American home baking once chemical leavening became cheap and reliable, from the 1830s and 1840s onward. Saleratus, first potassium and later sodium bicarbonate, needed an acid to work against, and stewed apples supplied it while also standing in for eggs and liquid, which mattered in a household with a barrel of windfalls in the cellar and no year-round dairy to spare. Cakes of this kind were later folded into the wartime and Depression repertoire under names like "war cake" and "boiled raisin cake", but the pattern predates those by decades and appears in dozens of community collections like this one, each with a neighbor's name attached.