Name: Apple Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 2 cups apples (pared, cored, and baked or stewed with very little water); yeast (amount as needed); warm water (as needed); coarse sea salt (¼ teaspoon); soda (¼ pound for every 15 pounds of flour, optional)

Why it works: Flour and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,140 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Bread

Ingredients

2 cups flour
2 cups apples (pared, cored, and baked or stewed with very little water)
yeast (amount as needed)
warm water (as needed)
coarse sea salt (¼ teaspoon)
soda (¼ pound for every 15 pounds of flour, optional)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

Wash the apples, then pare, core, and bake or stew them with very little water.

Make the dough

In a bowl, mix the yeast with a little warm water and the coarse sea salt.
Add the yeast mixture to the flour and combine well.
Incorporate the prepared apples into the dough.
If using soda, mix it with the flour or dissolve it in the water before adding.
Let the dough rise for about an hour.

Bake

Shape the dough into a loaf and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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.

Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,140 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the main structure of the loaf as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Apples: Add moisture and sweetness, keeping the crumb tender after baking.
Yeast: Produces gas during the rise, lightening the dough and giving it an airy crumb.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.