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Dessert

Jellied Apples

A baked apple dessert with red currant jelly filling, sugar, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Jellied Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Fill the centers with red currant jelly.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice.

  4. Add a little water to the pan around the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until candied but not broken.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Apple + red curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Large firm apples
Hold their shape while baking and provide the main body of the dish.
Red currant jelly
Melts into a glossy, sweet filling that sets and candies around the apple.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelize into a candied coating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the jelly and sugar.

The step that matters

Bake until candied but not broken. Firm apples can soften into mush if overbaked, while underbaking leaves them raw and the sugar unset. Checking for tenderness with a fork near the end of baking helps keep the apples intact while the sugar syrup thickens and glazes the surface.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon. 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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