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Dessert

Apple Jelly Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, and topped with apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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 cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, eggs, and baking powder; mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine the grated apple, lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, and egg in a bowl. Mix thoroughly and cook over hot water until thickened.

  2. Let the jelly cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the jelly between the layers of the cake.

  2. Dust the top of the cake with sugar before serving.

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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once heated and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Tart apple
Provides moisture and tart flavour, and its pectin helps the jelly thicken.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet apple filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the jelly over hot water until thickened. The egg and apple mixture thickens as the proteins set with gentle heat. Cooking it too hot or too long can curdle the egg, so keep the water hot rather than boiling and watch closely.

Swap the apple

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

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

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