Name: Dainty Apples
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 2 cups water; pink coloring; apples

Why it works: Sugar and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dainty Apples

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
2 cups water
pink coloring
apples

Directions

Make the syrup

In a pot, combine sugar and water, then bring to a boil.
Add pink coloring to the boiling mixture.

Cook the apples

Pare and core the apples.
Add the apples to the pot and boil until tender.

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.

Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple 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

Sugar: Sweetens the syrup and gives the apples a sweet, glossy coating as the liquid thickens.
Apples: Supply the fruit that softens in the hot syrup and takes on its sweetness.
Pink coloring: Tints the syrup pink, which colors the apples as they cook.

“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.