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Dessert

To Stew Dried Apples

A sweet stew of dried apples cooked in cider and flavored with lemon peel, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Stew Dried Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried apples in sweet cider.

  2. Add thin slips of lemon peel while stewing.

  3. Cook until the apples are soft.

Finish

  1. Transfer the apples to a deep dish and mash them finely.

  2. Sweeten to taste with white sugar.

  3. Add cinnamon, cloves, or allspice if desired.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried apples
Form the body of the dish; soften and break down into a thick, spoonable mash.
Sweet cider
Adds moisture and fruity flavour as the apples soften and absorb the liquid.
White sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the apples and lemon peel.
Thin slips of lemon peel
Adds bright, aromatic acidity that lifts the flavour of the stewed fruit.

The step that matters

Cook until the apples are soft. Dried apples need enough time in liquid to rehydrate fully. Stopping early leaves them tough and grainy, so the mash will not come together smoothly when pressed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cider, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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