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Dessert

Dutch Apple

A baked apple cake topped with a lemon‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Dutch Apple

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Beat the egg and add milk.

  4. Combine with the dry ingredients to form a soft dough.

  5. Spread the dough in a buttered baking tin to a thickness of ½ inch.

Add the apples and bake

  1. Pare and cut the apples into eight pieces each.

  2. Place them narrow edge down in the dough.

  3. Sprinkle the sugar over the apples.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil water and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Mix corn starch with a little water, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook for about 8 minutes.

  4. Stir in lemon juice, rind, and butter until melted.

  5. Serve the sauce over the baked apple dish.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the soft dough that holds the apples.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Apples
Provide moisture, tartness and the main fruit flavour of the dish.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks in the boiling liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch mixture to the boiling sauce. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first so it does not clump, then added to boiling liquid and cooked so the starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, sugar, sauce, corn, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, sugar, sauce, corn, lemon. 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.

More dutch apple recipes

Cake 43Pie 7Pudding 7

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