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Apple Cake Meringue

A baked apple cake topped with a stiff meringue layer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Cake Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bake the cake as you would for a jelly cake.

  2. Prepare the apples by straining them through a colander and sweetening them to taste.

Assemble and top

  1. Layer the apples thickly in the cake.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Cover the entire cake with the meringue mixture.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide moisture and tart fruit flavor to the filling between the cake layers.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets into the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and dissolves into the whites to help stabilize the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Cake
Forms the base structure that holds the apple layer and meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be free of grease and yolk to whip into a stable foam. Adding sugar gradually helps it dissolve and keeps the foam firm, so the meringue holds its shape when baked.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, egg):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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.

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