Name: Green-apple Cream
Ingredients: 4 cups green apples, peeled and cored; 1 cup white or brown sugar, or to taste; 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest or nutmeg; 4 cups heavy cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Green-apple Cream

Ingredients

4 cups green apples, peeled and cored
1 cup white or brown sugar, or to taste
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest or nutmeg
4 cups heavy cream

Directions

Make the apple base

Stew the green apples until soft, then mash them.
Sweeten the mashed apples with sugar to taste.
Flavor with lemon zest or nutmeg.

Make the cream

Add an equal amount of cream to the apples.
Sweeten the cream mixture to taste, using about 1 cup of sugar for every quart of cream.

Serve

Optionally, freeze the mixture and serve with a pitcher of cold cream on the side.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,089 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 apples: Provide the main fruit flavor and, once stewed and mashed, the body of the cream.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the green apples.
Heavy cream: Adds richness, fat and a smooth, creamy texture.