Name: Apple Dessert
Ingredients: large tart apples; quince jelly; lemon flavored sugar; grated pineapple; squares of bread (crusts removed); water; lemon juice; pineapple juice; almond cream

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 Dessert

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Pare and core the apples.
Fill the cavities with quince jelly, lemon flavored sugar, or grated pineapple and sugar.
Place each filled apple on a square of bread on earthen pie plates.
Moisten the apples with quince jelly dissolved in water, lemon juice, or pineapple juice.
Cover closely and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the apples are tender.
Serve with almond cream.

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).
Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Quince + pineappletop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together56 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Quince + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, quince, sugar, pineapple, bread, almond, cream):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Pearfits better
Lemonthe original

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