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Dessert

Impeomptu Jelly Cake

A cake with baked apple and lemon jelly layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Impeomptu 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 batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream butter and 2 cups sugar together.

  3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Fold in beaten egg whites and flour until combined.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine grated apple, lemon zest, lemon juice, 1 cup sugar, and 1 egg in a saucepan for the jelly.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring constantly, until it jellies.

  3. Cool the jelly before using.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the cake in jelly-cake pans or in thin layers.

  2. Spread the jelly between each layer as you assemble 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.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cake layers together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, with whites beaten in for lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Grated apple
Supplies pectin and moisture to help the jelly set.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the jelly and helps it set.

The step that matters

Boil the jelly while stirring constantly. Sugar, fruit and acid must reach a boil and thicken without scorching on the pan bottom. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents burnt flavor, while the mixture sets as it cools.

Swap the apple

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

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

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