Name: Apple Pie
Ingredients: 8 Butter apples or Lemon Pippin apples; 4 cloves; 4 ounces good moist sugar; lemon peel; quince jam (optional); puff pastry

Why it works: Clove and quince match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 164 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Pare, core, and cut the apples into quarters.
Place the apple quarters closely together in a pie dish and add the cloves.
In a mortar, rub together the lemon peel and sugar, then mix in quince jam if desired.

Bake

Cover the apples with puff pastry.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes 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.

Clove + quincetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together164 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + quincetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together336 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the main filling that softens and becomes tender and juicy under the pastry.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices while the apples bake.
Puff pastry: Forms a flaky, golden crust that browns in the oven over the fruit.
Quince jam: Adds concentrated fruit flavour and extra pectin to help the filling set.