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Dessert

Apple Filling

A simple apple filling made by cooking sliced green tart apples with sugar, sieving, and adding butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Peel and slice the green tart apples.

  2. Place them in a pot over heat with sugar to taste.

  3. Cook until tender, then remove from heat.

  4. Rub the apples through a fine sieve.

Finish the filling

  1. Add a small piece of butter and mix well.

  2. Allow to cool before using as a filling between cake layers.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar 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

Green tart apples
Provide the bulk and the tart, fruity flavour of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the apples' tartness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, glossier texture to the purée.

The step that matters

Allow to cool before using as a filling between cake layers. Hot apple purée is thin and runny, so it can soak into or slide off the cake layers. Cooling lets it thicken and set into a spreadable filling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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