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Dessert

Stewed Normandy Pippins

A sweet stew of Normandy pippins simmered with cinnamon, ginger, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Normandy Pippins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pippins.

  2. Put the pippins into 1 quart of water with 1/2 teaspoonful of powdered cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoonful of ground ginger, and let them stand for 12 hours.

Stew

  1. Transfer the pippins, water, cinnamon, and ginger to a stewpan, add thinly sliced lemon and half of the moist sugar.

  2. Let the mixture boil slowly until the pippins are half done.

  3. Add the remainder of the moist sugar and simmer until the pippins are quite tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew on glass dishes as dessert.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

20Calories
1 gProtein
0 gFat
6 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Pippins (in the method)
Fruit that softens during stewing to form the main body of the dessert.
Moist sugar (in the method)
Adds sweetness and helps the fruit take on a syrupy, rounded flavour as it cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the pippins are quite tender. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart before it softens evenly. A slow simmer lets the pippins soften through while keeping their shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, ginger. 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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