Name: Spiced Apples
Ingredients: 3 quarts sweet apples; 1 quart cider vinegar; 1 quart sugar; 2 tablespoons ground cloves; 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon; 2 tablespoons allspice

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spiced Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced syrup

Tie the spices in a piece of cheesecloth and place them in a pan with the vinegar and sugar.
Heat the mixture on the stove until it comes to a boil.

Cook the apples

Add the apples and cook until they are 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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

Sweet apples: Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, spoonable texture as they cook.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the syrup a tangy edge and balances the sugar.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and body to the syrup that the apples cook in.
Ground cloves: Contributes a warm, pungent aroma to the syrup and apples.
Ground cinnamon: Contributes a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and apples.
Allspice: Contributes a warm, mixed-spice aroma to the syrup and apples.

Swap the apple

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

Applethe original
Quincefits about as well
Figfits about as well
Pearfits less well

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