Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: Apples; Sugar; Bruised cinnamon; Lemon peel; Lemon juice; Butter (optional); Quince-marmalade (optional); Orange-paste (optional); Cloves (optional)

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Pare and core the apples, wiping the outside clean.
Boil the cores and peels with a little water until flavorful; strain.
Add sugar and bruised cinnamon to the liquid and simmer again.
Place a layer of apples in a dish with pastry around the edge.
Sprinkle half the sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice or cider over the first layer of apples.
Add the remaining apples, sugar, and the boiled liquid on top.
Cover with pastry and bake until golden.
Optionally, add butter when serving hot, or flavor with quince-marmalade, orange-paste, or cloves.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together506 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Quince + clovetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together164 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, butter, orange, clove):

Vanillafits about as well
Cranberryfits about as well
Figfits about as well
Quincethe original

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