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Dessert

Apple Conserve

A sweet preserve made by simmering apples in sugar syrup and drying them in the sun.

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 ↓

Apple Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until a rich syrup forms.

Cook the apples

  1. Add the apples and simmer until they are clear.

Dry and pack

  1. Carefully remove the apples and lay them on plates to dry in the sun.

  2. Roll the dried apples in sugar and pack them in tin boxes lined with waxed paper.

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 that becomes tender and clear as it simmers in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that preserves it.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup the apples simmer in.

The step that matters

Simmering the apples until clear. Simmering softens the fruit and lets the syrup penetrate it gradually. Cooking too hard can break the pieces apart, and stopping too early leaves them firm and under-infused.

“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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