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Dessert

Apple Cake

A baked apple cake with a sweet apple dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Apple Cake

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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the egg yolks.

  4. Mix in the milk, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into jelly tins.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Cook the grated apples, lemon juice, lemon rind, and beaten egg with sugar for 3 minutes.

  4. Spread the apple mixture 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs
Whites trapped by folding add lift, while yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilises the egg whites, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Sour apples
Add moisture, tartness and flavour to the cooked filling between the layers.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites gently. Deflating the whites by stirring too hard releases the air bubbles that give the cake its lift, leaving a dense result.

Swap the apple

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

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

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