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Dessert

Apple Lemon Jelly-cake

A baked cake with a warm apple and lemon filling, topped with a light batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Lemon Jelly-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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking powder, then gradually add to wet mixture.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine grated apples, lemon rind, ½ cup sugar, 1 egg, and a small piece of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook filling until warm, then set aside.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour half of cake batter into greased pan.

  2. Spread warm filling over batter, then top with remaining batter.

  3. Bake 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + appletop 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb and richness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Grated apples
Add moisture and fruity flavour to the filling and the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep its tender texture.

The step that matters

Adding the warm filling between batter layers. If the filling is hot or the batter is too thin, the layers can mix or sink. Spreading the filling warm but not hot over half the batter keeps the layers distinct while the cake sets.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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.

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