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Apple Toast

A dish of sautéed apples served on fried bread, sweetened with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Quarter and core the apples, then peel and slice them.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 1 ounce of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sliced apples, 2 ounces of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of water to the saucepan.

  4. Stir the mixture and let it stew for a few minutes until the apples are tender.

Fry the bread

  1. While the apples are cooking, slice 2 pieces of bread to ½ inch thick.

  2. In a frying pan, melt 2 ounces of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the bread slices and fry until they are a nice yellowish color and crisp.

  4. Remove the bread from the pan.

Serve

  1. Place the bread on a dish and sprinkle a little white sugar on top.

  2. Serve the apples on top of the fried bread while hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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
Soften when stewed and provide the main fruit body and moisture for the topping.
Butter
Fat that carries heat for frying and adds richness and golden browning to the bread.
White powdered sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them stew into a soft, glossy compote.
Bread
Provides a sturdy base that crisps and browns when fried in butter.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until crisp and golden. Bread fried in butter browns through the Maillard reaction, which adds flavor and color. Too little heat leaves it soft and pale, while too much burns the surface before the inside crisps.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread. 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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