Name: A Beautiful Stuffed Compote
Ingredients: large fine pippins (apples); peach marmalade; jelly (from boiled syrup); cream or whipped cream or maraschino; sweet almonds (cut into four lengths); sugar; egg whites

Why it works: Apple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

A Beautiful Stuffed Compote

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Choose large, fine pippins of equal size. Pare and core them, leaving the apples whole.
Cook the apples in syrup until three-quarters done, then drain and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes.
While still hot, fill the apples with peach marmalade.
Roll each apple in the jelly made from boiling down the syrup to give them a glossy finish.
Arrange the apples in a pyramid shape and add cream, whipped cream, or maraschino around the base.
Alternatively, form the apples into a dome and cover with a meringue made from beaten egg whites and sugar.
Decorate the meringue with sweet almonds and bake in the oven until browned.

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 + peachtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, syrup, cream, almond, sugar, egg):

Vanillafits better
Raspberryfits better
Apricotfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, syrup, cream, almond, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.