Name: Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: 1 quart flour; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder; water (enough to make a stiff batter); 6 apples; butter (for greasing)

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mix flour, salt, and baking powder together, then add water to make a stiff batter.
Pare and core the apples, then cut them into thin slices.
Grease six cups with butter.

Assemble and steam

Place a tablespoon of batter in each cup.
Fill the cups with apple slices and cover with batter.
Place the cups in a steamer and cook for 30 minutes.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,140 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the bulk of the batter that wraps and holds the apples together.
Baking powder: Releases gas during cooking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Apples: Provide the fruit filling and moisture that softens during steaming.