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Dessert

Apple Cake

A tart made with short or puff pastry, apples, black currants, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Apple Cake

Why it works: Black currant and apple share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 39 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tart

  1. Make a tart using short or puff pastry.

  2. Glaze the tart with the yolk of the egg.

  3. Score the top in a diamond pattern.

  4. Dredge sifted sugar over the tart.

Fill and finish

  1. Stew black currants with apples.

  2. Fill an open tartlet case with the mixture and bake.

  3. Once cooled, cover with whipped cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Black currant + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Black currant + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and apple 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

Short or puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.
Egg yolk
Glazes the surface, helping it brown during baking.
Sifted sugar
Dusts the top, adding sweetness and some caramelised colour.
Black currants
Add tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the apples.
Apples
Provide the soft, sweet body of the filling once stewed.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, cool topping after baking.

The step that matters

Stew the black currants with apples. Fruit releases water as it cooks, which can make the case soggy. Stewing and cooling the filling first helps control moisture and keeps the pastry crisp.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, black currant, cream. 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.

More apple cake recipes

Dried 62Dutch 43German 12Molasses 9Filling 8Danish 4 See all 117 →

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