Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Tea Cakes

Apple Tea Cakes are apple-filled cakes made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Tea Cakes

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Mix and sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon.

  2. Work in the butter until crumbly.

  3. Gradually add the milk and then the beaten egg, mixing until smooth.

  4. Spread the batter in well-buttered baking pans.

Top and bake

  1. Cut the apples into eighths and press them into the dough.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Bake until golden and serve with butter.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as its starch and protein set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Butter
Works into the flour to make the batter tender and adds richness and flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cakes structure and a set crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the batter and adds moisture for a soft texture.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness, and their sugars help the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking powder starts lifting the batter as soon as it is wet and heated, so the batter should go into the oven promptly after mixing. Baking until golden sets the crumb and browns the sugars on top; underbaking leaves the centre gummy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes