Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: 6 apples; ½ cup sugar; 1 lemon (zest and juice); 6 cloves; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; puff pastry

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Peel, core, and quarter the apples.
Boil the cores and peels in sugar and water, then strain the liquid and add more sugar.
Grate the lemon zest over the apples and squeeze in the lemon juice.
Mix the cloves with the apples and add the butter.

Bake

Cover the mixture with puff pastry and bake until golden.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, fruity layer when baked.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices that form a syrup as it cooks.
Lemon: Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the apples.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Puff pastry: Forms the flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

Swap the walnut

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

Chestnutfits better
Almondfits better
Chickpeafits about as well
Walnutthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.