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Dessert

Brunswick Jelly Cake

A buttery cake with rose water, topped with apple jelly and frosted with egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brunswick Jelly 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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and rose water, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft but not sticky.

  5. Roll out the dough and cut into cookie shapes.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until lightly golden.

  2. Once baked, spread apple jelly on top of each piece.

  3. Prepare frosting from the egg whites and spread it over the jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the dough a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter to add sweetness and help the dough brown lightly.
Egg yolks
Add richness, color and binding so the dough holds its shape.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the dough once baked.
Apple jelly
Adds a sweet, fruity layer and moisture on top of the baked pieces.

The step that matters

Adding flour gradually. Adding flour in stages lets you judge the dough's texture. Too much flour makes the dough tough and dry, which makes it hard to roll and cut cleanly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, rose, 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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