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Stuffed Apples to Serve with a Roast

Apples are stuffed with chestnut meats and currant jelly, simmered in stock, and served with roast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and chestnut work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Stuffed Apples to Serve with a Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine white stock, bay leaf, minced onion, salt, and pepper in a saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Poach the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, place them in a granite pan, pour the strained stock around them, then cover and simmer until tender but not broken.

  2. Remove the apples from the stock and set them aside.

Make the filling and stuff the apples

  1. Blanch the chestnut meats, slice them, cover them with the stock, and add currant jelly, coarse sea salt, and paprika; simmer until the nuts are tender.

  2. Fill the center of each apple heaping full with the chestnut mixture, then garnish the roast meat with the stuffed 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. Apple + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Onion + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pepper + chestnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart red apples
Hold their shape when simmered, while their flesh turns tender to receive the filling.
Chestnut meats
Provide the bulk and starchy, mealy texture of the stuffing.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor that balances the savory stock.
White stock
Supplies moisture and savory flavor while the apples poach and the nuts simmer.

The step that matters

Simmering the apples until tender but not broken. Apples keep their shape only if heated gently; a rolling boil breaks down the flesh and the apples collapse before they can be filled.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, apple, chestnut, meat):

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, apple, chestnut, meat. 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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