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Dessert

Porcupine Apples

A dessert of apples boiled in syrup, studded with almonds and jelly, served with rolled wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Porcupine Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

Make the syrup and cook the apples

  1. Cook the apples in a syrup made of 1 cup water and ½ cup sugar.

  2. Boil the syrup, then roll the apples in it.

Decorate and serve

  1. Stud the apples with blanched almonds and fill the centers with jelly.

  2. Arrange the apples on a large plate with rolled wafers between them.

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 + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. 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
Hold their shape while cooking and provide the fruit base of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds gloss to the apples as it cooks.
Blanched almonds
Provide a crunchy, nutty texture as a decorative stud on the apples.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and a soft, glossy filling in the apple centers.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond. 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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