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Apple Macedoine

A chilled fruit dish of apples, peaches, and rose geranium leaves in a sugar syrup with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Cut a thick slice off the stem end of the red apples, core them, and remove the pulp with a potato masher.

Make the syrup and cook the apples

  1. Cook ½ cup of sugar with 1 cup of water.

  2. Add clean rose geranium leaves and apple balls; cook until the balls are tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. When the syrup is cold, add the juice of 1 lemon and 2 sliced peaches.

  2. Fill the apple shells with the mixture and serve very cold as a first course at a luncheon.

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 + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

  2. Rose + geraniumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-rose oxide (green, flower).

  3. Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

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

  4. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red apples
Form the edible shells and the tender balls that hold the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the cooking liquid.
Peaches
Add soft texture and fruity sweetness to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Cooling the syrup before adding the fruit. Adding lemon and peaches to hot syrup can soften the fruit and dull its colour and flavour. Letting the syrup cool first keeps the peaches fresher and the filling firm when served very cold.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, rose, geranium, peach. 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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