Name: Baked Apples to Serve with Meat
Ingredients: tart apples; crumbs; mushrooms; catsup or fine herbs; butter; water

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Baked Apples to Serve with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Wash and core the tart apples.
Fill each apple with equal parts crumbs and mushrooms.
Season with catsup or fine herbs as preferred.
Place a small piece of butter on top of each apple.
Add a little water to the baking pan.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until tender.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Apple + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together226 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

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