Name: Apple Jonathan
Ingredients: apples, pared and sliced; buttermilk; baking soda; flour; butter; nutmeg or cinnamon; sweet cream or milk

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Jonathan

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a pudding dish with the sliced apples.
In a bowl, mix buttermilk with baking soda until foamy, then add flour to thicken.
Pour the batter over the apples so it spreads easily.
Bake until the apples are tender.
Invert the dish onto a platter.
Beat the soft apples smoothly on the crust.
Add a lump of butter and sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.
Serve hot with plenty of sweet cream or milk.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together674 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (buttermilk, flour, butter, nutmeg, cream):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

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