Name: Cinnamon Apples
Ingredients: 6 medium apples, peeled and cored; 2 bananas; 1 cup water; 2 cups sugar; ½ cup candy cinnamon drops

Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cinnamon Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Boil water and sugar together to make a syrup.
Stuff each apple with bananas and add two or three drops of candy cinnamon.
Place the stuffed apples into the syrup and sprinkle the remaining candy cinnamon drops over them.
Serve the apples cold in a crystal dish alongside a meat course.

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 + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Banana + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together701 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the firm fruit body that holds its shape while soaking in the syrup.
Bananas: Soften into a sweet, creamy filling inside each apple.
Sugar: Dissolves in the water to make a sweet syrup that flavors the apples.
Candy cinnamon drops: Add cinnamon flavor and aroma to the filling and the top of the apples.