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Gluten-Free European Apple Cake

"My Romanian family all make some version of this dense apple walnut cake every autumn. I think it's common to Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians too. I'm so pleased that I could almost replicate the taste and texture without wheat! Coconut flour can be substituted for almond flour. Makes a 9x13-inch pan. When cool, you can dust with confectioners' sugar if desired."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,586 recipes mention both. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

1 9x13-inch cake
Prep30 min
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the sorghum flour, almond flour, rice flour, tapioca flour, xanthan gum, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

  3. In a large bowl, beat the white sugar, vegetable oil and eggs together until smooth and well combined.

  4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until just combined. The batter will be thick.

  5. Fold in the chopped apples and chopped walnuts until evenly distributed.

  6. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.

  7. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  8. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, then cut into squares and serve.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cinnamon + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sorghum + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorghum, flour, rice, cinnamon, sugar, egg, apple):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sorghum, flour, rice, cinnamon, sugar, egg, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).