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Dessert

Preserved Apples

Preserved apples are apples boiled in a sugar syrup and stored for winter use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Preserved Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. In November, prepare apples for winter use.

  2. Pare the apples.

  3. Core the apples.

  4. Leave the apples whole.

  5. Drop the apples in cold water to prevent browning.

  6. Wipe the apples.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water for each pound of apples.

  2. Clarify and skim the syrup well.

Cook the apples

  1. Place the apples in a skillet without stacking them.

  2. Boil the apples quickly until they look clear.

  3. Remove the apples carefully and place them on dishes.

  4. If the syrup is too thin after removing the apples, boil it again.

Add the lemon

  1. Cut the lemon peels into thin rings.

  2. Boil the lemon peels until soft.

  3. Add the lemon peels to the syrup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firm pippin apples
Firm flesh holds its shape through long boiling in syrup.
White sugar
Sugar in the syrup preserves the fruit and adds sweetness.
Lemon peel
Lemon peel adds aromatic oils and a bright, slightly bitter flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the apples quickly without stacking them. Apples need room in a single layer to cook evenly and keep their shape. Stacked or overboiled apples break apart and cook unevenly, while the syrup must stay thick enough to hold them.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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