Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: apples, peeled, quartered, and cored; 1 tablespoon brown sugar; ½ teaspoon grated ginger; lemon peel; 2 tablespoons lemon or orange marmalade (optional); pounded cinnamon (optional); mace (optional); cloves (optional); puff or tart paste

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

Cut the apples into thin pieces.
In a pie dish, layer 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, ½ teaspoon of grated ginger, and lemon peel, followed by a layer of apples. Repeat until the dish is full.
The next day, wet the rim of the dish and line it with puff or tart paste.
Brush the paste with water, cover with more paste, and press the edges together.
Notch the edges with a cutter and make a small hole in the center with a knife.
Optionally, season with lemon or orange marmalade, pounded cinnamon, mace, and 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).
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Pearfits better
Quincefits better
Orangefits better
Lemonthe original

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