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Dessert

Apple Cake

A yeasted dough baked with apples, currants, and nutmeg.

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

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 Cake

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. In a bowl, mix the sugar and yeast with a wooden spoon until it forms a syrup.

  2. Dissolve the butter in lukewarm milk and beat in the egg.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the yeast.

  4. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt.

  5. Stir in the yeast mixture and beat until smooth.

  6. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1.5 hours.

  7. On a floured surface, work the dough until smooth and roll it out to about 1 inch thick.

  8. Place the dough on a greased baking sheet.

Top and bake

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples, then cut them again.

  2. Arrange the apple pieces over the dough and sprinkle with cleaned currants.

  3. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and dust with nutmeg.

  4. Let rise for another 30 minutes, then bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.

  5. Cut into quarters to serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the cake together.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and moistens the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer texture and richer flavour.
Apples
Provide moisture, tartness and fruity flavour in the topping.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise before baking. Yeast needs a warm, sufficiently long rise to build gas and air bubbles; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

Swap the currant

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

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

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