Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Dried-apple-pie
Ingredients
Directions
Remove all cores or hulls from the dried apples and wash them until the water is clear.
Soak the apples in cold water overnight.
In a pot, combine the soaked apples and the soaking water, adding more water if needed.
Cover the pot and cook over moderate heat for one hour without stirring.
Spread a thin layer of the cooked apples in a pie crust.
Prepare the pie as you would a green apple pie, adding butter if desired.
Cover and bake, or if the apples are sifted, bake without a cover.
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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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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