Name: Lemon Raisin Pie
Ingredients: 1 cup chopped raisins; 1 lemon, chopped; 1 cup cold water; 1 heaping tablespoon flour; 1 cup sugar; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the flour and sugar together in a bowl.
Add the cold water to the flour and sugar mixture.
In a pie crust, combine the chopped raisins and lemon.
Pour the flour mixture over the raisins and lemon.
Dot the top with butter before baking.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, walnut, butter):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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