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Dessert

Apple Roly-poly

A steamed apple roll made with a soft dough, sliced apples, sugar, cinnamon, and butter.

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 Roly-poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together.

  2. Rub in the butter.

  3. Beat the egg and add it to the flour mixture with enough milk to make a soft dough.

  4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

  5. Roll the dough into a sheet ¼ inch thick.

Fill and roll

  1. Spread the dough thickly with sliced apples.

  2. Sift the sugar and cinnamon over the apples.

  3. Roll the dough like a jelly roll and press the edges together.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the pudding in a baking dish, cover, and steam over boiling water for 1.5 hours, or bake in a pudding dish for 40 minutes.

  2. Serve with lemon or wine sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dough rises and stays light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and keeps it from turning tough.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling taste balanced with the apples.
Apples (in the method)
Provide moisture and tart flavour that contrasts with the sweet dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough and sealing the edges. If the edges are not pressed firmly together, filling can leak out during steaming or baking and the roll can open up. Rolling the dough evenly keeps the layers and filling in a neat, consistent spiral so it cooks through at the same rate.

“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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