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Dessert

Apple Pralines

A dessert of apples topped with caramelized sugar and nuts, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Pralines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in 1½ cups of sugar and 2 cups of water until tender.

Make the praline

  1. In a separate pot, make a candy with 1 cup of sugar, a little water, and ½ cup of minced nuts.

  2. When the candy begins to caramelize, place a spoonful on top of each apple.

Serve

  1. Pour the syrup from cooking the apples over the apples and serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Apple + nutstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 main body and tender texture of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and the praline, and helps the candy caramelize to a golden brown.
Minced nuts
Add crunch and a toasty flavour to the praline topping.

The step that matters

Caramelizing the candy. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, so it can turn bitter if overcooked. Remove it when it just begins to colour, so the praline stays sweet and nutty.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nuts, cream. 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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