Name: Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: 12 tart apples; 2 cups all-purpose flour (for biscuit paste); ½ cup water; 1 cup sugar; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Flour and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare a biscuit paste using 2 cups of all-purpose flour.
Core the apples and place them in a pudding dish.

Make the syrup and bake

In a separate bowl, mix the water, sugar, and butter.
Pour the mixture over the apples in the pudding dish.
Bake for 45 minutes.

Serve

Serve with sugar and cream or any pudding sauce.

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.

Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Tart apples: Provide the main filling, with tart flavor that balances the sweet syrup and tender flesh once baked.
All-purpose flour: Forms the biscuit paste that wraps and holds the apples together as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps form a syrup that flavors the apples as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the syrup, giving a smoother, rounder flavor.