Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: Ripe apples, pared, cored, and sliced thin; Powdered sugar; Rose water; Cloves; Rich pie crust; Nutmeg; Butter

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Place a pie crust in the bottom of a dish.
Layer the sliced apples and powdered sugar alternately until the dish is filled.
Add a few teaspoons of rose water and some cloves.
Cover with another pie crust and bake until golden.
For a richer filling, stew the apples until dry, then rub through a colander.
Sweeten the apple puree with powdered sugar and let it cool.
Once cool, add the whites of three eggs and a teacup of whipped cream.
Beat all ingredients together until well combined.
Spread the mixture onto baked pie crusts in shallow pie plates.
Grate nutmeg on top and add a few bits of butter.
Dredge with flour and cover with another crust before baking.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonfits better
Applethe original

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