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Dessert

Impeomptu Jelly Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and a fruit jelly layer.

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

Impeomptu 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter and 2 cups of sugar.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flour until combined.

Make the jelly

  1. For the jelly, boil the grated apple, lemon rind, lemon juice, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 egg until it jellies, stirring constantly.

  2. Cool the jelly before using.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the cake in jelly‑cake pans or in thin layers.

  2. Spread the jelly between each layer as you assemble 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.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and the beaten whites lift and give structure to the layers.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cake layers together.
Grated apple
Its pectin helps the jelly set when boiled with sugar and lemon.
Lemon
Its juice and rind add acidity and aroma and help the jelly set.

The step that matters

Boil the jelly until it jellies, stirring constantly. Sugar, fruit pectin and acid must reach the right concentration to set. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give a burnt taste and uneven set.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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