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Dessert

Apie Cakes

A sweet cake made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, baking soda, sour cream, flour, and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apie Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and pulverized sugar until well combined.

  3. Cream the butter and add it to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream and add it to the bowl.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the tops of the cakes before baking.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lift and lighten the cakes.
Sour cream
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled and shaped.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour cream spreads the reaction evenly through the dough, so the cakes rise uniformly instead of in patches with bitter spots.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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