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Dessert

Stewed Apples for Dinner

A simple dessert of apples stewed in a sweet syrup of water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Stewed Apples for Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1 quart of water and 1 ½ cups of sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.

Cook the apples

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Add the apples to the boiling syrup, ensuring they are nearly covered by the water.

  3. Cover and simmer slowly until the apples are almost tender.

Serve

  1. Uncover and carefully place the tender apples, rounded side up, in a serving dish.

  2. Pour some of the syrup over the apples before serving.

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. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and apple 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens and turns tender while simmering in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the apples slowly until almost tender. Simmering gently keeps the apple pieces intact while the starch and pectin soften. A hard boil can break the quarters apart and make them mushy before they are done.

“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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