Name: Dutch-cakes
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; ¾ pound butter; powdered sugar for dusting

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 ↓

Dutch-cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 pound flour
¾ pound butter
powdered sugar for dusting

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pastry

Prepare a puff pastry with flour and butter, giving it six turns.
Roll the pastry out to ½ inch thick.

Shape the cakes

Cut the pastry into rounds about 2 inches in diameter.
Dust a table with powdered sugar.
Dip one side of each round into flour and the other into sugar.
Place the rounds sugared side up.
Roll them out to 4 inches long.
Arrange on a baking sheet with the floured side down, spaced apart.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour: Forms the gluten structure of the pastry and helps the rounds hold their shape.
Butter: Creates flaky layers as it stays solid between turns and then turns to steam in the oven.

“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.