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Whisky or Brandy Apples

Preserved apples simmered with sugar, lemon, whisky or brandy, then jarred with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and whisky work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 96 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Whisky or Brandy Apples

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the apples, sugar, lemon juice, whisky or brandy, and spices in a pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture gently until the apples are tender but not breaking apart.

  3. Transfer the apples to jars.

  4. Boil the remaining syrup down and pour it over the apples in the jars.

  5. Seal the jars; they will keep for months.

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 + whiskytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + whiskytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 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 fruit body that softens into tender pieces during gentle simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, dissolved into the juices, forms the syrup that preserves the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the apples from browning.
Whisky or brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol content helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer the apples gently. Gentle heat softens the apples while keeping their cell walls intact. Vigorous boiling breaks the fruit apart and turns the texture mushy, so the apples should be checked for tenderness without collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, whisky. 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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