Skip to main content
Dessert

Dutch Apple Cake with Lemon Sauce

A baked apple cake topped with a lemon‑scented sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Dutch Apple Cake with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Rub in the butter thoroughly.

  4. Beat the egg with the milk and stir into the dry mixture.

  5. Spread the mixture ½ inch thick on a baking pan.

Top and bake

  1. Pare, core, and cut the apples into eight pieces each.

  2. Stick the apple pieces into the dough in rows and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, bring the cold water and sugar to a boil.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold water and add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Remove from heat as soon as it thickens.

  4. Stir in the butter and lemon rind and juice (or lemon extract).

  5. Serve the cake hot with the lemon sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake base as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dough rises and turns light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender texture.
Egg
Binds the dough and helps give it structure as it bakes.
Apples
Add moisture and fruitiness that soften and sweeten as they bake.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.

The step that matters

Remove the sauce from heat as soon as it thickens. Cornstarch thickens when heated but can break down and turn thin or gluey if it is overcooked, so it should come off the heat once thick.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes