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Dessert

Apple Cake, or German Tart

A baked apple cake with a buttery crust and sweet apple marmalade filling.

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

  1. In a bowl, work together the butter and flour until they resemble fine bread crumbs.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, then mix in the egg yolks and enough water to form a firm, smooth paste.

Line the mold

  1. Butter a plain tin cake or pie mold.

  2. Roll out the paste thinly and line the mold with it. Cut a band of paste for the sides, moisten the edge of the band and press it to the bottom crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, boil the apples, sugar, lemon juice, fresh butter, and cinnamon over low heat. Increase the heat until the mixture becomes smooth and dry.

  2. Cool the marmalade completely before filling the mold.

Cover and finish

  1. Roll out a cover for the tart. Place the cover over the filled mold without touching the marmalade. Seal the edges of the cover.

  2. Trim any excess paste and sprinkle with pounded sugar.

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

Butter
Enriches the paste and adds richness and tenderness to the crust.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that holds the crust together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste into a smooth dough.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, becoming soft and cooking down into a thick marmalade.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling thicken as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cool the marmalade completely before filling the mold. Filling the crust with hot marmalade can soften the pastry from below and melt the butter, so the crust may turn soggy or lose its shape.

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.

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