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Dessert

Steamed Apples

A dish of sweet apples cooked in water and sugar, served with the reduced juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar 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 ↓

Steamed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the apples and place them in a pan.

  2. Add a little water to the pan.

  3. Sprinkle ½ cup sugar over the apples until they cover the bottom of the pan.

  4. Cover with another pan and cook until done.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, reduce the juice and pour it over the apples before serving.

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

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

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

Apples
Provide the fruit and most of the juice that forms the sauce as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the juice, helping form a syrup.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until done. The covered pan traps steam, cooking the apples gently and evenly. With little water and sugar on the base, the pan can scorch if the heat is too high or the apples are left unattended, so check them 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.

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