Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Gateau

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Gateau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub stale bread through a wire sieve.

  2. Weigh 6 ounces of crumbs and mix with 6 ounces of sugar and 4 ounces of chopped suet.

Make the batter

  1. Add grated lemon rind, chopped apples, flour, baking powder, lemon juice, and eggs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased tin mold.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and golden.

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 the moisture from the apples and eggs.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on baking to give the cake its structure.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the crumb moist and tender as it bakes.
Apples
Contribute moisture and fruity flavour, softening as the cake bakes.
Flour
Helps bind the batter and give the cake body as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened batter wet in the centre, while overbaking dries the crumb. Judging the set and colour by eye or touch helps the cake finish moist and firm.

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 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes