Name: Grape Roll
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1/2 cup butter; 1/2 cup sugar; 1/2 cup water; 1 tablespoon flour or corn starch; fresh grapes

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 ↓

Grape Roll

Ingredients

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 the filling

Make a very rich biscuit dough and roll it thin.
Separate the skins and pulp of the fresh grapes.
Spread the grape pulp thinly over the dough and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the roll

Roll up the dough like a jelly roll and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make and serve the sauce

For the sauce, boil together 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, and butter the size of an egg.
Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour or corn starch.
Pour the sauce over the grape skins and serve.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + grapetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,028 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + grapetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,482 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

All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the rich biscuit dough together when rolled and baked.
Butter: Adds richness and tenderness to the biscuit dough and gives the sauce body.
Sugar: Sweetens the grape filling and the sauce, and helps the dough brown in the oven.
Fresh grapes: Supply the juicy pulp and skins that form the fruit filling inside the roll.
Flour or corn starch: Thickens the boiled sauce as its starch granules swell in the hot liquid.