Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: 6 apples; 1 cup sugar (for syrup); 1 lemon (rind and juice); 6 cloves; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; puff pastry (for covering)

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Pare, core, and quarter the apples.
Boil the cores and parings in sugar and water.
Strain off the liquid and add more sugar to taste.
Grate the lemon rind over the apples and squeeze in the lemon juice.
Mix the cloves with the apples and add the butter.
Cover the mixture with puff pastry.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, syrup, lemon, clove, butter):

Chestnutfits better
Almondfits better
Pistachiofits better
Walnutthe original

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