Name: Apple Cake
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons melted butter; 1 cup sugar; 1 egg; 1½ cups milk; 2½ cups flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; 1 cup grated apple; 1 egg white, beaten stiff

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 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix melted butter, sugar, egg, and milk until combined.
In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and lemon juice.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake and fill

Divide the batter into layers.
Bake the layers until golden.
For the filling, combine grated apple, beaten egg white, and sugar without cooking.
Once the layers are baked, fill them with the apple mixture.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

Flour: Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and become light.
Egg white: Beaten stiff, it adds airy lightness to the apple filling.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb and carrying flavor.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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