Name: Apple Water
Ingredients: 1 large sour apple; 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 cup boiling water

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Water

Ingredients

1 large sour apple
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup boiling water

Directions

Slice, core, and peel the apple.
Place the sugar in the cavity of the apple.
Bake the apple until tender.
Mash the baked apple.
Pour boiling water over the mashed apple and let it stand for 30 minutes.
Strain the mixture.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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

Apple: Provides the fruit flavor and body that the water takes on as it steeps.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of a sour apple.
Boiling water: Acts as the liquid that extracts flavor from the mashed baked apple.

“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.