Name: Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: good baking apples; sugar; flour for dusting; pastry for casing

Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

good baking apples
sugar
flour for dusting
pastry for casing

Directions

Prepare the apples

Peel and halve the apples, then core them.
Fill the core space with sugar and reassemble the apple halves.

Wrap and cook

Wrap each apple in pastry and place in a floured cloth.
Boil for about 30 minutes.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples: Hold their shape when cooked and soften into a tender, juicy filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the apple and draws out juices that form a syrup around the fruit.
Pastry: Encloses the apple so it steams and cooks evenly while holding in its filling.