Name: Apple Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 1 egg-sized piece of butter; 1 cup flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon; 1 sour apple, pared and grated

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

Boil grated lemon rind and juice, grated sour apple, and 1 cup sugar together for 5 minutes to make a jelly.

Make and bake the cake

In a bowl, cream together 1 cup sugar and the butter.
Add 1 cup flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder to the mixture.
Divide the batter into 4 layers and bake.

Assemble

Spread the jelly between the layers 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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 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: Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour: Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the liquid and set by baking.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and become light.
Sour apple: Adds moisture and tart flavour to the jelly filling.
Lemon: Its juice and rind add acidity and aroma to the jelly filling.