Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Cake

A baked apple cake with bread crumbs and butter, glazed with sugar and optional rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Apple Cake

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a pie dish about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Press a large quantity of bread-crumbs into the buttered dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the dish with stewed and sweetened apples.

  2. Dot with 1 ounce of butter in small pieces.

  3. Cover with another layer of bread-crumbs, about ½ inch thick.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400 °F / 200 °C) until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Run a knife around the edges and turn it out onto a plate.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and glaze with a red-hot shovel.

  3. If served hot, pour a little rum around it and light it for effect.

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust top and bottom that holds the soft apple filling.
Stewed and sweetened apples
Provide the moist, soft filling and most of the sweetness of the cake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Turn it out onto a plate. Run a knife around the edges first so the crumb layers do not stick to the dish. Loosening the edges helps the cake release in one piece instead of tearing.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

More apple cake recipes

Dried 62Dutch 43German 12Molasses 9Filling 8Danish 4 See all 117 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes