Name: Ginger Apples
Ingredients: good apples (Greenings or Pippins); chopped preserved ginger; sugar; water; lemon; dried ginger; ginger syrup; whipped cream

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Apples

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.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Pare and core the apples.
Fill the center of each apple with a spoonful of chopped preserved ginger.
In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and lemon, and add a piece of dried ginger. Cook until combined.
Pour the syrup over the apples in a baking dish.
Bake until the apples are soft and transparent, basting occasionally with the syrup.
Serve hot or cold, topped with whipped cream and pieces of ginger.

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.

Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,424 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 (ginger, sugar, lemon, syrup, cream):

Orangefits better
Vanillafits better
Limefits better
Applethe original

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