Name: Apple Jelly
Ingredients: sour, juicy apples; water; ⅓ cup white wine; juice of 1 lemon; sugar

Why it works: Apple and white wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

Cut the apples into pieces, leaving the skins on, and include the seeds.
Place the apples in a pot and add enough water to just cover them.

Extract the juice

Boil on low heat, covered, for all day.
Strain the mixture through a jelly bag and let it drip overnight.
Measure the juice in the morning.

Make the jelly

For every 3 pints of juice, add ⅓ cup of white wine and the juice of 1 lemon.
Boil 1 pint of juice with 1 pound of sugar.

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 + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples: Provide pectin and acidity that help the juice set into a jelly.
Sugar: Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that supports pectin setting and brightens the flavour.