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Dessert

Apple Turnovers

Apple turnovers are fried pastries filled with mashed sour apples, served warm with maple syrup or butter-sugar-cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Turnovers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix cream, sour milk, baking soda, salt, and enough flour to form a biscuit dough.

  2. Roll out the dough.

  3. Cut the dough into turnover shapes.

Fill and seal

  1. Place a spoonful of the stewed and mashed apples on one side of each turnover.

  2. Fold the other side of the dough over the filling.

  3. Pinch the edges tightly to seal.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat in a skillet until hot.

  2. Carefully drop in the turnovers.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  4. Serve warm with maple syrup or a sauce made of butter, sugar, and cream.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Apple + maple syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Reacts with baking soda to lift the dough and adds a tangy flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the dough rise and turn tender.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the biscuit dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuit dough together around the filling.
Dried apples
Provide the sweet-tart fruit filling that is sealed inside each turnover.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges tightly to seal. If the edges are not sealed well, the filling can leak into the hot fat while frying, making the turnovers greasy and causing them to break apart.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, flour, biscuit, maple syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, flour, biscuit, maple syrup. 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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