Name: Dutch Apple Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ½ cup butter; 1 cup milk; 4 sour apples; Sugar; Cinnamon

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Dutch Apple Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together.
Rub in the butter, then add the milk and beaten egg.
Spread the mixture in a buttered shallow pan.
Pare, core, and quarter the apples, then lay them in rows on top of the dough, pressing the edges slightly into the dough.
Sprinkle the apples with sugar and a little cinnamon.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for thirty minutes.
Serve hot with lemon or a hard 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.

Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.