Name: Apple Fritters
Ingredients: 2 cups apples, chopped; ½ cup water; ¼ cup sugar; 1 teaspoon lemon peel, grated; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; ⅓ cup white wine; juice of ½ lemon; 2 tablespoons butter; batter for frying (as needed)

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, stew the chopped apples with water, sugar, lemon peel, and cinnamon until soft.
Add white wine, lemon juice, and butter to the mixture and let it cool.
Once cooled, mix the apple mixture with the batter until well combined.

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 + 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 + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, white wine, butter):

Pearfits better
Vanillafits better
Plumfits better
Lemonthe original

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