Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Apple Turnovers
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pastry
In a bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder.
Rub the clarified dripping or butter into the flour until well combined.
Add enough cold water to moisten and mix into a stiff paste.
Flour a board and turn the paste onto it.
Flour a rolling pin and roll out the paste to about ¼ inch thick.
Cut the paste into rounds, each about the size of a small plate.
Fill and shape
Peel, quarter, and core the apples, then cut them into thin slices.
Place an apple slice on one half of each round and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of moist sugar.
Wet the edges of the paste, fold it over the apple, and press the edges together firmly.
Bake and serve
Grease a baking sheet with a little dripping and place the turnovers on it.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.
Serve the turnovers on a hot dish.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + appletop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Flour
- Forms the paste that wraps the apple and holds the turnover together.
- Clarified dripping or butter
- Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and richness to the pastry.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the paste so the pastry rises and becomes lighter.
- Apples
- Provide the fruit filling that softens and turns sweet-tart when baked.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the apple filling and helps it caramelise slightly in the oven.
The step that matters
Pressing the edges together firmly. If the wet edges are not sealed well, juices from the apple can leak out during baking and the filling may escape, leaving the turnover dry and the pastry soggy.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar. 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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