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Dessert

Dutch Apple Cake

A coffee cake dough topped with sliced tart apples, sugar, cinnamon, and butter, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Dutch Apple Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the dough as you would for coffee cake.

  2. Place the dough in a pan.

Top and bake

  1. Cover the top with sliced tart apples, setting them close together and slightly overlapping.

  2. Generously sprinkle sugar over the apples.

  3. Dust with cinnamon and dot with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the apples are very tender.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Dough for coffee cake
Forms the base layer that holds the apples and bakes into a soft, tender crumb.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit layer, softening during baking while keeping some tartness against the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelize slightly on the surface as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts over the apples, adding moisture and flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are very tender. Apples must cook long enough to soften fully, because firm slices stay crisp and raw-tasting. Sugar and butter on top also brown during baking, so the cake can darken before the apples are done if the oven runs hot.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, cinnamon, butter. 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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