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Baking

Apple Jelly Cake

A cake made with a batter of egg, sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, and topped with a boiled apple and lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 egg, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup sweet milk, and 2 tablespoons butter until smooth.

  3. Add 2 cups flour and 3 teaspoons baking powder, and mix until combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Make the jelly and finish

  1. For the jelly, combine 2 grated apples, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the jelly mixture for 3 minutes.

  3. Spread the jelly over the cake once it has cooled.

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. Milk + buttertop 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter, and helps set the jelly.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Apples
Provide pectin and body that help the grated apple mixture thicken into jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and jelly and helps the jelly thicken.

The step that matters

Boil the jelly mixture for 3 minutes. Boiling dissolves the sugar and activates the apple pectin and egg proteins, so the jelly thickens as it cools. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny; boiling too long can make it stiff or scorch.

Swap the apple

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

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

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