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Dessert

Apple Stephan

A suet crust pastry filled with apples, orange, currants, citron, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mackay, L. Gertrude. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,189 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Stephan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Mix two pounds of flour with one pound of finely chopped suet, add water to make a soft dough.

  2. Roll the dough into a sheet one inch thick.

  3. Grease a shallow pan with hot suet, sprinkle with two tablespoons of brown sugar.

  4. Place the crust in the pan.

Fill and bake

  1. Cover the crust with the following mixture: one pound of sliced apples, one-half pound of orange and lemon peel chipped, one-half pound of currants and one-half of shredded citron.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture with one cup of brown sugar, one saltspoon each of cloves and cinnamon.

  3. Squeeze the juice of three lemons over all and add one gill of water.

  4. Cover with a thin layer of paste.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven for four hours.

  6. Serve with sauce.

By Mackay, L. Gertrude. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the suet crust that holds the filling.
Suet
Adds fat to the crust, keeping it rich and tender as it bakes.
Apples
Provide moisture and tartness that balance the sweet brown sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling take on a deeper flavor as it cooks.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit through the filling.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven for four hours. A long, gentle bake lets the suet crust cook through and the apples soften without drying out. Too hot an oven can scorch the sugar and leave the fruit underdone at the center.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, apple, orange, clove, lemon, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Cranberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Quincebetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, apple, orange, clove, lemon, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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