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Dessert

Apple Cobbler

Apple Cobbler is a baked dessert of sliced apples topped with a biscuit-like batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Apple Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Slice the apples and place them in a 3-quart tin pan.

  3. Add sugar, butter, and enough hot water to just cover the apples.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, milk, and salt until well combined.

  2. Drop the mixture on top of the apples, leaving a hole in the center for steam.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pan tightly and do not remove the cover while cooking.

  2. Set the pan where it will boil very slowly for about 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with hard sauce or cream and sugar as preferred.

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base and tartness that balances the sweet topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps form a syrup with the hot water.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter topping as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the topping so it bakes light rather than dense.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the topping batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the syrup around the apples.

The step that matters

Keep the cover on while cooking. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, cooling the surface and stopping the topping from rising and setting properly. Trapped steam keeps the topping moist and cooks it through.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, 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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