Name: Fruit Pie
Ingredients: 1 pound raisins; 10-12 medium-sized sour apples, chopped; 2 cups sugar (or more to taste); Butter, in pieces; Spices (such as cloves and nutmeg, to taste); Pie crust (enough for bottom and top)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Pie

Ingredients

1 pound raisins
10-12 medium-sized sour apples, chopped
2 cups sugar (or more to taste)
Butter, in pieces
Spices (such as cloves and nutmeg, to taste)
Pie crust (enough for bottom and top)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Assemble the pie

Make a pie crust and place a layer in the bottom of a two-quart tin basin.
Add a two-inch thick layer of chopped sour apples.
Layer chopped raisins on top of the apples.
Sprinkle sugar, pieces of butter, and spices over the raisins.
Repeat layering with crust and fruit until the basin is full.
Cover with a top layer of crust.

Bake and serve

Bake for two hours.
Once done, turn the pie bottom side up on a plate and sprinkle fine sugar over it before serving.
This pie is just as good when warmed again.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples: Provide the main fruit body and tartness that balances the sugar.
Raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture through the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps draw moisture out of the fruit.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.

Swap the apple

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonfits about as well
Applethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.