Name: Pan Dowdy
Ingredients: cooking apples; sugar; spice; bread crumbs; butter; cold water

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pan Dowdy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

Peel, core, and quarter the cooking apples.

Layer the dish

Cover the bottom of a deep pie dish with apples.
Sprinkle a little sugar and spice over the apples.
Add a layer of bread crumbs and small bits of butter.
Repeat layering apples, sugar, spice, bread crumbs, and butter until the dish is full.
Finish with a layer of bread crumbs on top.
Pour a cup of cold water over the entire dish.

Bake

Bake until the apples are soft.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,790 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Cooking apples: Provide the fruit that softens during baking to form the filling.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw out juices from the apples.
Bread crumbs: Form a crumbly topping and layers that soak up apple juices.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the crumbs brown as they bake.