Name: Baked Apples with Tapioca
Ingredients: 6 apples, cored; coarse sea salt; small pieces of butter; sugar; ½ cup water; 2 cups water; 1 teaspoon salt; hard sauce flavored with vanilla; nutmeg

Why it works: Apple and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,501 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Tapioca

Ingredients

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Core the apples and sprinkle a little coarse sea salt, a small piece of butter in each core, and sugar over all.
Place the apples in a baking dish with ½ cup of water, cover, and bake.
In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of salt, bring to a boil, and keep warm.
When the apples are half done, pour the tapioca mixture over them and return to the oven.
Bake until the apples are fully cooked.
Serve with hard sauce flavored with vanilla and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,501 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,781 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, butter, sugar, sauce, vanilla):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Clovefits about as well
Gingerfits about as well

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