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Dessert

Apple Short Cake

A baked cake with a sweet apple filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Short 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. Cream together the sugar and butter in a bowl. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda in another bowl.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly tins.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Grate the apples for the filling.

  3. Beat the egg.

  4. Add the grated apples, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind to the saucepan.

  5. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it comes to a boil.

  6. Spread the filling between layers of the baked 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cake tenderness and a rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
Apples
Provide moisture and tartness to the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the dry ingredients slowly and mixing only until smooth keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough.

Swap the apple

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

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

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