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Dessert

Apple Devil

Apple Devil is a boiled apple dish flavored with lemon, sugar, ginger, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Devil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, core, slice the apples, and place them in cold water.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the apples, lemon juice and peel, sugar, ginger, and cayenne.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes clear.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream or flavored egg whites.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 bulk of the dish and, as they cook, soften into a soft, pulpy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples break down into a thick, glossy mixture as it boils.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the apples from tasting flat.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. Boiling the mixture until it turns clear shows the sugar and fruit have cooked down enough to set into a syrupy texture. Stopping too early leaves it thin and cloudy, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, ginger, 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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