Stores the OS a list of installed apps and their install locations?

Some time ago I made a backup of the internal data partition with TWRP. Then I installed and updated some apps in the adopted storage. Due to some other issue with the phone, internal data was partly deleted and I restored the (slightly outdated) data from backup. Nevertheless the newly installed apps on adopted storage don't show and updated apps only appear after renaming the app installation directory (usually the an appended "-2" must be changed to "-1"). So I conclude that the system somewhere in the data stores a list of the installed apps and their install location, but where (and in which data format)?