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Dessert

Apple Jonathan

A baked apple cake made with sliced apples, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Apple Jonathan

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 apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples very thin.

  2. Place the apples in a deep pudding dish with the cold water.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add to the mixture.

  4. Blend the batter for five minutes.

  5. Pour the batter over the apples and let it stand for five minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for thirty minutes.

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. Apple + buttertop 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that cooks down beneath the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the batter rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the apples and let it stand for five minutes.. Batter that is poured on too early or too late can be unevenly distributed over the fruit. Letting the batter rest briefly before baking lets it settle evenly over the apples, so the cake bakes into a uniform layer.

Swap the apple

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

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

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