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Dessert

Apple Paste

Apple paste is a fruit preserve made by cooking apples, sieving the pulp, and mixing with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar 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 ↓

Apple Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in a little water until quite soft.

  3. Rub the cooked apples through a fine sieve using a wooden spoon.

Make the paste

  1. Weigh the pulp and place it in a preserving pan with an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Dry and set

  1. Spread the mixture thinly on plates or in molds.

  2. Dry in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) or on a cool stove.

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 + 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

Sound ripe apples
Provide the pulp and natural pectin that help the paste set and give it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, thickens the pulp and helps preserve the paste once it is set.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar. Boiling concentrates the mixture so the apple pectin and sugar can gel as it cools and dries. Stir often, because the thickening mixture scorches easily on the base of the pan.

“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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