Name: Apples Stewed Whole
Ingredients: Apples; Sugar; 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 ↓

Apples Stewed Whole

Ingredients

Apples
Sugar
Water

Directions

Prepare the apples

Pare the apples and remove the core.

Stew the apples

Bring enough water to a boil to cover the bottom of the kettle by 1 inch.
Place the apples in the kettle, sprinkling sugar over them.
Boil for a moment, then cover the kettle and place it in the Caloric cooker for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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.

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: Form the bulk of the dish and soften into tender, spoonable pieces as they stew.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the natural tartness of the apples.

“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.