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Dessert

Apple Jelly Cake

A cake made with grated apples, lemon, sugar, eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, and sweet milk, baked and topped with cooled apple mixture.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple filling

  1. Combine grated apples, lemon juice and rind, ½ cup sugar, and 1 beaten egg in a tin basin.

  2. Simmer with constant stirring until cooked.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat egg whites and yolks separately in a separate bowl.

  2. Mix 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup softened butter until creamy.

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk to the butter mixture and mix well.

  4. Sift in 4 cups flour and 3 teaspoons baking powder, mixing until combined.

  5. Divide the batter into four equal parts and pour into baking tins or jelly pans.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Spread the cooled apple mixture on the hot 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.

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. 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

Apples
Provide moisture and tart fruit flavour that forms the jelly-like filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and add structure and richness to the cake batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and batter and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Spread the cooled apple mixture on the hot cake. The filling must be fully cooled before spreading, so it stays thick rather than soaking into the warm crumb and running. The cake should be hot from the oven so the filling sinks slightly into the surface and sets as it cools.

Swap the apple

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

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

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