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Dessert

A Good Cheap Layer Cake

A layered cake with apple filling and cream, made from butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the egg and egg yolk, then mix in the sweet milk.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Divide the batter into layers.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake the layers until golden.

  2. For the filling, pare the sour apples.

  3. Grate the pared apples.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg white and granulated sugar until frothy.

  5. Fold in the grated apple and vanilla extract.

Assemble the cake

  1. Spread the apple cream between the layers.

  2. Spread the apple cream on top of the cake.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 they set.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the crumb when creamed with sugar.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the layers brown as they bake.
Sour apples
Add acidity and moisture to the apple cream filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the grated apple and vanilla. Folding gently keeps the whipped egg white mixture airy. Overmixing deflates it, leaving the apple cream dense and heavy between the layers.

Swap the apple

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

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

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