Name: Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: large baking apples; quince marmalade; flour; water; nutmeg; sugar; butter

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 Dumplings

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Peel and core the apples using a scoop.
Fill the cavities of the apples with quince marmalade.
Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.
Wrap each apple in a piece of dough.
Boil the wrapped apples in a cloth or brush them with egg whites and bake them.
Serve with grated nutmeg, sifted sugar, and fresh butter in separate saucers.

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).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Quince + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, quince, flour, sugar, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Clovefits about as well
Nutmegthe original
Gingerfits less well

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