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Dessert

Warm Jelly Cakes

A baked cake made with flour, eggs, butter, sugar, milk, and topped with fruit jelly while warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Warm Jelly Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and beaten egg whites alternately.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly cake tins.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. While still warm, spread with jelly and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites add richness, structure and lift to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness and a rich flavour to the cake.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it bake into a soft cake.
Apple, peach, or other sweet jelly
Spread on the warm cakes, it adds sweetness, moisture and fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Spread the jelly while the cakes are still warm. Warm cakes are soft and absorb the jelly so it sticks and spreads evenly. Once cool, the cake firms up and the jelly may not adhere well.

Swap the apple

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

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

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