Applesauce Cake

• 1 cup butter (or any other fat)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup applesauce
• 1 2/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 nutmeg (about 3/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg. Watch your fingers!)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup raisins

Mix and sift flour, soda, salt and spices. Cream fat, add sugar, then the applesauce. Add sifted flour gradually. When well mixed, add raisins. Bake in a loaf pan in moderate oven [about 350°F] about 40 minutes.

A Note About Nutmeg

I asked about the amount of nutmeg in the applesauce cake. Great-Grammy wrote: "Maybe a quarter of a whole nutmeg—1/4 teaspoon wouldn’t flavor it very much. On the other hand, some folks like nutmeg better than others! But then, I guess a whole nutmeg (which you have to grate) may be more intense since it is fresher." A quarter nutmeg would be 1/2 to 1 teaspoon grated. You need enough to taste.

Like the other traditional mulling spices (cinnamon, ginger and cloves), nutmeg is mildly narcotic. It is the seed of the nutmeg tree. The stringy fruit around the nut makes the spice mace. Birds really like nutmeg. Hunters in Indonesia used to wait until the fruit was ripe. The birds would eat nutmegs and get drunk. When they fell out of the trees, the hunter would just walk over and pick them up. Nutmeg affects people too; it just takes more of it because we are so much bigger. A whole grated nutmeg (2 or 3 teaspoons) all at once is enough to make a person sick.

Today we mostly use nutmeg in sweets, but it aids digestion and helps control flatulence, so you also find it in dishes made with dried beans.