Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.
Make the cake
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the flour, butter, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Mix until smooth.
Divide the batter evenly into 4 round cake tins.
Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Make the filling and assemble
For the filling, combine the grated apple, lemon juice, and lemon rind with sugar in a saucepan.
Boil for 3 minutes, then let it cool.
Spread the apple filling between the cooled cakes.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + appletop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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
- Eggs
- Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a light, fluffy structure.
- Flour
- Forms the cake's main structure once the batter sets in the oven.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and stabilising the crumb.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
- Sour apple
- Adds moisture and tart flavour that balances the sweetness of the cake and filling.
The step that matters
Boil the apple filling for 3 minutes, then cool it fully. Cooking the grated apple with sugar and lemon thickens it into a spreadable filling. Spreading it while warm would let it soak into and soften the cakes.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, butter, cream, lemon):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Raspberryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, cream, 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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