Name: Apple Tarts a LA Creme
Ingredients: 1 pound superfine flour; 1 pound salt butter (or fresh butter); ½ pound short paste; 2 medium-sized apples; 2 lemons; 1 pound powdered sugar; 8 cloves; ½ cup water

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Tarts a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the salt butter in cold water overnight to remove excess salt, or use fresh butter.
Prepare the pastry as for vol-au-vent, rolling it out as needed.
Make the short paste as described for Croustades of Oysters en Kari.
Peel, quarter, and core the apples, then fill two tart dishes with them.
Grate the lemons and mix with the powdered sugar to sweeten the apples, adding 4 cloves to each tart.
Pour ½ cup of water into each dish, pressing the apples down to fill well.
Brush the rim of each tart dish with a mixture of 2 egg yolks and 1 tablespoon of water.
Roll out the short paste to cover each tart dish.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Quincefits better
Lemonthe original

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