Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: apples, peeled and sliced; sugar; chopped lemon peel; butter (optional); quinces or cloves (optional); cinnamon (boiled in liquid); puff pastry

Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare the apples by peeling and slicing them.
Lay a strip of puff pastry around the edge of a pie dish.
Fill the dish with a layer of apples, then sprinkle with sugar and lemon peel.
Add the remaining apples until the dish is full.
Optionally, add a small piece of butter and some quinces or cloves for flavor.
Pour in the liquid that has been boiled with cinnamon.
Cover the dish with puff pastry and seal the edges.
Bake in the preheated oven 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.

Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together506 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Quince + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together199 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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 quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, butter, cinnamon):

Vanillafits better
Pearfits about as well
Orangefits about as well
Quincethe original

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