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Dessert

Apple Cream Cake

A cake with batter of sugar, milk, egg, butter, lemon extract, baking powder, flour, and a filling of grated apple, sugar, egg white, and flavoring.

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 Cream 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix ½ cup sugar, ⅓ cup milk, 1 egg, ⅓ cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon lemon extract, and 1½ teaspoons baking powder.

  3. Add enough flour to create a smooth batter.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Divide the batter into 3 layers and bake.

  2. For the filling, combine grated apple, 1 cup sugar, beaten egg white, and 1 teaspoon flavoring. Beat until light and creamy.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers and on top.

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. Lemon + appletop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and, as beaten white, lighten the apple filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the layers tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the layers together.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and fruity flavor to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and filling and helps browning in the layers.

The step that matters

Beat the filling until light and creamy. Beating the egg white with the grated apple and sugar traps air in the mixture, giving the filling a light, spreadable texture instead of a dense, runny one.

Swap the apple

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

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

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