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Dessert

Apple Batter

A baked apple batter cake made with sliced apples, eggs, flour, milk, butter, and served with sugar, nutmeg, or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Batter

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.

Prepare

  1. Slice the apples thinly and set aside.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy.

  3. Stir in enough flour to create a batter thicker than pound cake.

  4. Mix in the milk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in the sliced apples and the batter mixture alternately.

  2. Stir in a little melted butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar, butter, and nutmeg, or with sugar and cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a tender structure as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure so it sets firm rather than runny.
Apples
Provide moisture and fruity sweetness that soften and perfume the cake as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter while contributing to browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the sliced apples and batter alternately. Layering apples with batter spreads the fruit through the cake so it bakes evenly. Overmixing after the flour is added can develop gluten and make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the apple

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

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

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