Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Fruit Pie
Ingredients
Directions
If using apples, peel, core, and slice them. For rhubarb, peel if necessary; otherwise, just wipe and cut into pieces.
Place half the fruit in a pie dish, sprinkle with sugar, and add the remaining fruit on top.
Add about 2 tablespoons of water and wet the edges of the dish.
Make a short crust pastry and roll it out larger than the pie dish top.
Cut strips from the pastry and lay them around the edge of the dish, wetting them on top.
If the remaining pastry isn't large enough, roll it out larger, place it on top, and press the edges slightly.
Trim the edges, allowing the pastry to slightly project from the dish edges, and ornament as desired without flattening the edges.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,140 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Blueberryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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