Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Cake, or German Tart

A buttery apple tart with a crumbly crust, filled with cooked apples, sugar, lemon, butter, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Cake, or German Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Mix butter and flour in a bowl with your fingers until it resembles fine crumbs.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, egg yolks, and water to form a smooth paste.

  3. Butter a pie mold.

  4. Roll out the paste thinly.

  5. Trim the paste to fit the mold.

  6. Cover the bottom and sides of the mold with the paste.

  7. Moisten the edges with water or egg.

Make the filling

  1. Boil apples, sugar, lemon juice, butter, and cinnamon until smooth and dry.

  2. Cool the filling completely.

Assemble and finish

  1. Add the cooled filling to the mold.

  2. Roll out a cover for the tart.

  3. Place the cover over the filling.

  4. Seal the edges of the tart.

  5. Trim excess paste.

  6. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the tart.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 structure of the paste once mixed with butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the paste and helps the filling become smooth.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste into a smooth dough.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its fruit flavor and body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds a fine sugar finish on top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple filling.

The step that matters

Cool the filling completely. Adding warm filling to the paste can soften the butter and make the crust greasy and fragile. Cooling it fully keeps the crust firm and helps the tart hold its shape when sliced.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes