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Dessert

Apple Gâteau

A steamed apple cake made with stale bread crumbs, sugar, beef suet, apples, lemon, flour, baking powder, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Apple Gâteau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub stale bread through a wire sieve.

  2. Weigh 6 ounces of crumbs and combine with sugar, suet, lemon rind, chopped apples, flour, baking powder, lemon juice, and eggs. Mix well and pour into a greased tin mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture until cooked through.

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. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the cake and absorb moisture from the eggs and fruit.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give it a set, structured crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the cake moist and tender as it cooks.
Apples
Add moisture and a fruity flavour that runs through the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter and makes the cake lighter.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture until cooked through. Steaming cooks the batter gently with moist heat, so the centre sets without drying out. Undercooking leaves a wet, dense middle, so the cake should be tested for doneness before serving.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, beef, lemon, flour, egg. 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.

More apple cake recipes

Dried 62Dutch 43German 12Molasses 9Filling 8Danish 4 See all 117 →

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