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Dessert

Apple Scallop

A baked apple dessert layered with bread crumbs, walnuts, and sugar, finished with water or sweet cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apple Scallop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples, then cut them into slices.

  2. Layer bread crumbs in the bottom of a pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add a layer of apple slices, followed by a layer of chopped walnuts and a sprinkling of sugar.

  2. Repeat the layers until the dish is filled, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  3. Pour over ½ cup of water or sweet cider and bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve warm, plain or with sugar.

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 + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  3. Apple + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,051 recipes

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

  4. Bread + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. 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

Tart apples
Provide the main fruit body and tart flavour that balances the sugar.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and give the layers a soft, pudding-like body.
Chopped english walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty aroma against the soft apples.
Sugar
Sweetens the layers and helps the apples caramelise slightly as they bake.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, sugar, cider. 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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