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Dessert

Frosted Apples

Frosted apples are apples simmered in sugar syrup, topped with meringue, and finished with a lemon‑nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Frosted Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Cover the apples with water and sugar.

  3. Simmer until tender.

  4. Remove the apples from the syrup and drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Wash the apple parings.

  2. Simmer the parings with a little water for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the juice from the parings.

  4. Add two tablespoons of sugar to the juice. Boil the juice for five minutes.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon juice and a little nutmeg to the sauce. Cool the sauce.

Frost and serve

  1. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and add one tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Coat the tops of the apples lightly with the meringue.

  3. Place the apples in a cool oven to dry.

  4. Pour the sauce around the apples.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Hold their shape when simmered and provide the main body of the dish.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms a light meringue that frosts the apple tops.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup, the sauce and the meringue.
Apple parings
Simmered to extract flavourful juice that becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Drying the meringue in a cool oven. Meringue is mostly whipped egg white and sugar. Low, gentle heat dries it to a crisp coating without browning or weeping, while a hot oven would colour it too fast.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, sauce, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, sauce, lemon, nutmeg. 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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