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Green Apple Cake
Two cups of sugar, one-half cup butter, one teaspoon of cloves, two teaspoons cinnamon, one and one-half cups of green apple sauce, one pound of seeded raisins, two teaspoons of soda in half a cup of hot water, five cups of flour.
— Mrs. William Webster
A spiced applesauce fruitcake with no eggs and no leavening but soda, typical of the plain village cakes made when the first apples came off the tree. The proportions are given as a list, so the assembly and the pan are left to the cook.
- "Green apple sauce" means tart, not unripe-and-inedibleEarly summer windfalls and green cooking apples were stewed down with little or no sugar. Use a thick, unsweetened applesauce from a tart variety; a sweetened commercial sauce will push an already very sweet cake over the edge.
- Method the list omitsCream the butter and sugar, beat in the applesauce and spices, dissolve the soda in the half cup of hot water and add it, then work in the flour and raisins last. The batter will be stiff, closer to a fruitcake than a layer cake.
- Check the flour against your applesauceFive cups of flour to about two cups of total liquid is a heavy ratio, and the flour of the period may well have been softer and less thirsty than modern all-purpose. If the batter will not fall from the spoon, hold back a half cup of the flour or loosen it with a little more of the applesauce.
- The soda is the leaveningTwo teaspoons of soda is a lot, but it is reacting with the acid in the apples rather than with a separate acid such as sour milk. Dissolve it fully in the hot water and get the cake into the oven promptly, as much of the lift is spent early.
- Raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that they are seedless as sold now — ordinary dark raisins are the equivalent. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink through the stiff batter.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. The volume suits a 10-inch tube pan or two 9x5-inch loaf pans, greased and lined; loaves take about an hour, a tube pan closer to 70 minutes. Test with a skewer, as the fruit keeps the crumb moist-looking.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 20 servings, depending on the pan chosen. Cakes of this weight and spicing generally improve after a day wrapped tightly, and it slices far more cleanly cold than warm.
Applesauce cake belongs to a familiar household logic of apple country, where fruit was abundant, sugar and butter were dear, and eggs were seasonal. The sauce does double duty here, supplying both moisture and the acid that sets off the soda, which is why a cake with no eggs at all still rises. "Green apple" points to early, hard, sharp fruit -- good for nothing raw but excellent stewed. The dish is generally grouped with the plain "soda cakes" that spread through American home baking after saleratus and then baking soda became cheap grocery staples in the middle of the nineteenth century.