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Dessert

Apple Cake

Apple cake is a layered baked dessert made with apples, currant jelly, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and grated bread.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the butter and grated bread in a pan.

  2. Stir together the apples, jelly, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Let the mixture stand for about 30 minutes.

  4. Butter a baking tin well.

Assemble

  1. Line the tin with a layer of the prepared bread.

  2. Add a layer of the apple mixture.

  3. Add another layer of bread.

  4. Repeat with two layers of apples and three layers of bread.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, sliced, with whipped cream on top.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and tart fruit flavour that the cake is built around.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the bread and carries flavour.
Bread
Forms the layers that soak up the fruit juices and hold the cake together.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them soften and release their juices.
Currant jelly
Adds concentrated fruit flavour and a little pectin to help set the layers.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for about 30 minutes. Standing lets sugar draw juice out of the sliced apples, so the apple mixture becomes moist and syrupy. Without this rest the layers may be dry or uneven once assembled.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, apple, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, apple, nutmeg, bread. 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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