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Dessert

Caramel Ou Sucre De Pomme

A caramel made with sugar, apple juice, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Caramel Ou Sucre De Pomme

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 1 pound of sugar with ⅓ cup of apple juice and a few drops of orange flower water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the mixture off the heat to combine.

  3. Return the saucepan to the heat and cook until it reaches the hard crack stage, stirring occasionally.

  4. Keep the edges of the saucepan clean to prevent crystallization.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and apple 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

Sugar
Forms the caramel base and, once cooked to hard crack, sets firm and glassy.
Apple juice
Adds liquid that dissolves the sugar and provides fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the edges of the saucepan clean. Sugar crystals clinging to the pan walls can seed crystallization in the syrup, making the caramel grainy instead of smooth. Wiping or washing down the sides prevents this.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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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