Skip to main content
Dessert

A Good Cheap Layer Cake

A simple layered cake with apple cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Good Cheap Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and the egg yolk, then mix well.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. Combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add the flour mixture to the wet mixture.

  5. Flavor to taste and mix until smooth.

Make the apple cream

  1. Pare the sour apples.

  2. Grate the apples.

  3. Beat the egg white and small cup of granulated sugar until frothy.

  4. Fold in the grated apple, then mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  2. Bake until golden.

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. 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Sour apples
Add moisture and tart acidity to the apple cream.

The step that matters

Fold in the grated apple. Folding gently keeps the whipped egg white airy. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, leaving the apple cream dense and less light.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, cream. 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.

More layer cake recipes

Chocolate 44White 23Fruit 18Orange 16Fig 12Coconut 11 See all 133 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes