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Dessert

Apple Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, sweet milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and grated sour apples.

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

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs (reserve the white of one) and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  6. Divide the batter into three greased pie tins and bake for about 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, beat the reserved egg white until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar and beat until stiff and snowy white.

  3. Fold in the grated sour apples.

  4. Spread the filling between the layers and on top of the 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.

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 + 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites whipped with sugar give the filling its stiff, airy body.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the creamed base.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour apples
Add moisture, tartness and flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white with sugar until stiff. Egg white must be whipped to a stable foam before the sugar and apples are folded in. Under-whipped foam collapses and makes the filling runny, while over-whipping can make it grainy and dry.

Swap the apple

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

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

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