Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
English Apple Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
Chop the suet finely and mix it with the flour to make a paste.
Place a heaping teaspoon of sugar, a little lemon peel, and a pinch of nutmeg inside each apple slice.
Grease a baking dish well and arrange the dumplings around it.
Spread some drippings over the dumplings and sprinkle light brown sugar thickly on top.
Add a large quantity of light brown sugar to the bottom of the dish and pour in 1 pint of water.
Once the dumplings begin to brown, baste them frequently.
Serve the dumplings on a flat dish.
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.
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Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together11,318 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,790 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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 (flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg):
- Raisinfits better
- Limefits better
- Orangefits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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