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Cider Apple Sauce

A thick sauce made by reducing sweet cider and cooking apples until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cider Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the cider

  1. Boil the sweet cider in a pot until it reduces to 2 cups.

Make the sauce

  1. Core, peel, and quarter the apples.

  2. Add the apples to the reduced cider.

  3. Cook slowly, stirring frequently, for several hours until thick and smooth.

  4. Keep the pot covered to prevent evaporation.

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. Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cider
Forms the liquid base, and reducing it concentrates its sugars and flavor.
Sweet apples
Break down during cooking and release pectin, which thickens the sauce and smooths its texture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, stirring frequently. Sugars in the reduced cider can scorch on the bottom of the pot if heat is too high or stirring is neglected. Long, gentle cooking lets the apples break down and their pectin thicken the sauce evenly.

“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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