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Stewed Apples

A sweet apple dish simmered in sugar syrup with orange peel and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Stewed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Peel the apples and drop them in water to prevent browning.

  2. In a pot, combine the sugar and water, then clarify with the egg whites.

Cook the apples

  1. Once the syrup is clear, add the apples.

  2. When the apples are half cooked, add the orange peel and cut citron.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

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

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
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and forms the body of the dish.
Coarse white sugar
Sweetens the dish and forms the syrup the apples cook in.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping impurities so the syrup becomes clear.

The step that matters

Clarifying the syrup with egg whites. Egg whites set as the syrup heats and collect impurities that rise to the surface. If the syrup is not allowed to reach that point, or the scum is not removed, the syrup stays cloudy and the finished apples look dull.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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