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Dessert

Apple Cake

A baked cake with a sweet apple filling, made with powdered sugar, flour, corn starch, butter, milk, egg whites, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Apple Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 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 the butter and powdered sugar together until smooth.

  3. Add the sweet milk to the creamed mixture, then mix in the corn starch.

  4. Alternate adding the flour and whipped egg whites.

  5. Grease jelly cake tins and pour in the batter.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine grated apples, beaten egg, sugar, and lemon juice and peel in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring until it boils.

  3. Cool the filling before spreading it between the baked cakes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 the sugar to give the batter structure and a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and keeps the cake tender.
Tart apples
Provide moisture and tart flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the apple filling until it boils. Grated apples release liquid as they heat, and the filling must boil so the starch thickens it enough to spread without running out of the cake layers.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More apple cake recipes

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

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