Name: Flan of Pineapple
Ingredients: 6 eggs; ½ cup castor sugar; ½ lb flaky or short crust pastry; 4 apples; 4 cloves; ⅓ cup sherry; rice for baking; butter for greasing

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Flan of Pineapple

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Peel, core, and cut each apple into 8 sections.
Place the apples in a saucepan with cloves and sherry, cover, and cook in a water bath until tender.
Roll out the pastry to ¼ inch thick and line a 6-inch flan ring with it.
Fill the pastry with rice on a layer of buttered paper and bake at 400°F (200°C).
Once baked, remove the rice and paper, and fill the pastry with the cooked apples arranged in a pyramid.
Strain any juice over the apples and sprinkle with sugar.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and spread over the apples, then dredge with castor sugar.
Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until lightly browned.
Serve hot or cold.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together395 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Clove + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,237 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, apple, sherry, rice, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Clovethe original
Gingerfits about as well

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