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Dessert

Fruit Sauces and Preserves

A sweet preserve made from sliced tart apples simmered in a sugar syrup with lemon rind and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,551 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fruit Sauces and Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining the sugar and water in a pot.

Cook the apples

  1. Peel the apples, cut each into six pieces, and cook in the hot syrup until clear.

  2. Remove the apples from the syrup and place them in a glass dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lemon rind and juice to the syrup and boil until thick.

  2. Remove the lemon rind and pour the syrup over the apples.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and apple share little aroma chemistry, yet 16,478 recipes mention both: they likely 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 body that softens and turns clear in the hot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma, and its rind contributes flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, and the syrup thickens as it cools. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too stiff or cause sugar to crystallize.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apple):

  1. Pearbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Apricotbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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