Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Compote
Ingredients
Directions
Peel, halve, and core the apples.
Soak the apples in cold water for a short time, then drain them.
Place the apples in syrup and boil until soft.
Transfer the apples to a serving dish and strain the syrup over them.
For added flavor, boil some apple in the syrup to make a jelly, strain it, and pour it over the apples.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,235 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together742 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, syrup):
- Pearfits better
- Apricotfits better
- Quincefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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