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Sauce

Cranberry and Apple Sauce

A sauce of stewed cranberries and apples sweetened with sugar and molasses, with butter added.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Cranberry and Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cranberry base

  1. Stew cranberries in a pot until soft.

  2. Stir in sugar and molasses.

  3. Scald the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Strain if desired.

Cook the apples and finish

  1. Pare and quarter the apples.

  2. If apples are tart, stew them in water; if not, use cider.

  3. After the apples are soft, add butter and sweeten to taste.

  4. For an alternative, boil unpared apples with quinces and molasses in cider until reduced by half.

  5. Strain the sauce when cool.

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.

  1. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cider + quincetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and body that the sauce is built on as they soften.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the cranberries' tartness.
Molasses
Adds deep, slightly bitter sweetness and a darker colour to the sauce.
Apples
Add pectin and body, so the sauce thickens and turns smooth as they soften.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Scald the mixture for a few minutes. Sugar and molasses added to softened cranberries need brief heating to dissolve fully and blend. Boiling too hard or too long can scorch the molasses and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, apple, butter, cider):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Quincethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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