Name: Pies and Desserts
Ingredients: 4 large apples, peeled and chopped fine; 2 cups seeded raisins; 2 tablespoons brandy; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ teaspoon suet, finely chopped; 1 grated nutmeg; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon water; sugar to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pies and Desserts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Combine apples, raisins, brandy, butter, suet, nutmeg, cloves, water, and sugar in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

Spread the filling to your desired thickness on puff pastry.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,291 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the main body and tart flavour of the pie filling.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat for a rounded flavour in the filling.
Suet: Adds richness and a firmer texture to the filling.
Brandy: Adds aromatic flavour to the filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, brandy, butter, nutmeg, clove, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Applethe original
Quincefits about as well

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

“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.