Name: Baked Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: 12 peeled and cored apples; 1 pint water; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 ½ cups sugar; ½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

Steam the apples for about 30 minutes.
Make a pastry and cut it into pieces the size of a saucer.
Place an apple on each piece of pastry.

Fill and wrap

Fill the center of each apple with butter, cinnamon, and sugar.
Fold the pastry around the apple.

Bake

Place the dumplings in a pan with 1 pint of water, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of butter.
Bake and baste frequently until golden brown.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,784 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Form the soft, moist filling that the pastry wraps around.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the pastry and surfaces brown during baking.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the syrup in the pan caramelise and brown.
Cinnamon: Adds warm aroma to the apple filling.