Name: Apple Filling
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 teaspoon lemon rind; 4 apples; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Measure the sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and rind into a bowl and mix well.
Pare and core the apples, then cut them into eighths.
Roll out half of the pie crust to fit a pie tin.
Cover the bottom of the pie tin with the crust, allowing it to come over the edge.
Place the apple slices in the crust and spread the sugar mixture over them.
Dot the apples with butter.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, butter):

Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Raisinfits better
Applethe original

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