Name: Dutch Apple Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups sliced apples; ½ cup sugar; rich biscuit dough (made from flour, butter, and milk)

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 ↓

Dutch Apple Cake

Ingredients

2 cups sliced apples
½ cup sugar
rich biscuit dough (made from flour, butter, and milk)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Prepare a rich biscuit dough and roll it out to about ½ inch thick.
Place the rolled dough in a pan.

Assemble

Arrange the sliced apples in rows over the top of the dough.
Sprinkle the apples with sugar.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.
Serve warm with additional 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rich biscuit dough: Forms the base layer that holds the apples and bakes into a tender, golden crust.
Sliced apples: Provide the fruit filling, adding moisture and a tart flavour as they cook.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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