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Dessert

Apple Jelly Cake

A cake made with grated apples, lemon, sugar, eggs, and a batter of flour, sugar, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the filling

  1. Combine grated apples, lemon juice and rind, sugar, and beaten egg in a tin basin.

  2. Simmer the mixture until cooked, stirring constantly.

  3. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites.

  2. Beat the yolks.

  3. Mix butter and sugar together, then add milk.

  4. Sift in flour and baking powder and mix until combined.

  5. Divide the batter into four equal parts.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into baking tins or jelly pans.

  2. Use the cooled apple mixture as a filling while the cake is still hot.

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. Apple + milktop 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

Apples
Provide moisture, tartness and natural pectin that sets the filling into a jelly-like layer.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, with the whites beaten separately to help the batter rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb soft and moist.

The step that matters

Simmer the apple mixture until cooked, stirring constantly. Apples and sugar scorch easily on the bottom of a pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the filling smooth and free of burnt flavour.

Swap the apple

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

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

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