Name: Plum Pie
Ingredients: Any kind of plums; Sugar to taste; Flour for dredging; Pie crust (top and bottom)

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plum Pie

Ingredients

Any kind of plums
Sugar to taste
Flour for dredging
Pie crust (top and bottom)

Directions

Stew the plums and sweeten just before removing from the stove.
Remove the pits and pour the pulp into a pie plate lined with the bottom crust.
Dredge the top with flour, cut an aperture in the top crust, and bake.
Dredge with powdered sugar and serve cold.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Plum + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together777 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,313 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).