Name: Fashionable Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: large apples; orange marmalade or lemon marmalade; all-purpose flour for crust; water

Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fashionable Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

large apples
orange marmalade or lemon marmalade
all-purpose flour for crust
water

Directions

Remove the cores from the apples without cutting them in half.
Fill the cavities with orange or lemon marmalade.
Roll out a thin crust and enclose each apple in it.
Wrap the apples in small cloths and tie them securely.
Boil the dumplings for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the type of apples used.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,821 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,140 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).