Name: Tart II Apple Pie
Ingredients: 12 to 15 apples; ¾ pound fine granulated sugar; grated zest and juice of 1 lemon; 2 ounces orange peel, cut; a pinch of ground cinnamon; ⅓ cup wine; puff pastry

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tart II Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Peel, core, and slice the apples.
Stew the apples until soft.
Sweeten and season the apples with sugar, lemon zest and juice, orange peel, cinnamon, and wine.
Cover a pie plate with puff pastry.
Fill the plate with the apple mixture and create a lattice top with pastry strips.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 (sugar, lemon, orange, cinnamon, wine):

Vanillafits better
Limefits about as well
Figfits about as well
Applethe original

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