Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Paste

A preserve made from peeled, cooked apples, sugar, and water, strained and boiled, then spread and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in a little water until 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 the paste

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

  2. Dry in a cool oven 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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp and the fruit flavor for the paste.
Fine white sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps the paste set firm and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp with sugar for 20 minutes. The mixture must reach a thick, concentrated state so that once dried it holds together as a firm paste rather than staying sticky. Boiling drives off water and dissolves the sugar evenly, so the timing and stirring affect the final texture.

“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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes