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Dessert

Apple Strudel

Apple Strudel is a pastry filled with sliced apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and citron, baked with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Strudel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl and make a hole in the center.

  2. Pour in the warm water, melted butter, whole eggs, egg yolks, and salt.

  3. Stir slowly to form a smooth dough.

  4. Cover and let it rest in a warm place.

  5. Peel and finely slice the apples.

Fill and roll

  1. Flour a clean tablecloth.

  2. Roll out the dough as thin as possible.

  3. Gently stretch the dough with your hands to make it even and thin.

  4. Pour melted butter over the dough.

  5. Mix the apples with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and citron.

  6. Lift the tablecloth at the corners.

  7. Roll the strudel.

Bake

  1. Place the rolled strudel in a buttered pan and dot with butter.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes.

  3. Pour cream over it.

  4. Finish baking for another 15 minutes.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that makes the dough stretch thin without tearing.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold together when stretched.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the pastry brown in the oven.
Apples
Provide the main filling, releasing moisture that cooks down into the strudel's juicy centre.
Cream
Poured over during baking, it enriches the filling and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Stretching the dough thin. Gluten needs to rest and relax so the dough stretches thin without tearing. Thin layers bake up flaky and let the filling cook evenly, while thick dough stays dense and doughy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, raisin, cream. 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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