Name: Pot Apple Pie
Ingredients: sliced sour apples; water; molasses; allspice; cream of tartar; biscuit dough

Why it works: Allspice and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Place sliced sour apples in a clean iron pot and add enough water to cover them.
Stew the apples gently until slightly softened.
Add molasses and allspice to the pot.
Roll out biscuit dough to cover the top of the apples and place it on top.
Cover the pot tightly and let it boil gently for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the thickness of the crust.

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.

Allspice + biscuittop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Apple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together998 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Molasses + allspicetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,508 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,235 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 (molasses, allspice, cream, biscuit):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, allspice, cream, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.