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Pastes and Syrups

A sweet apple syrup made by stewing apples with ginger, lemon, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Pastes and Syrups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Stew the apples with the cold water until they become a pulp.

  2. Add the sugar, ginger (tied in muslin), and the juice and grated rind of the lemons.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

Bottle

  1. Remove the ginger, pour into jars, and cover with gummed paper.

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

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

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Ginger and sugar 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
Break down into a pulp that gives the syrup body and natural pectin for thickness.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled down, thickens the syrup and helps preserve it.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour, and the grated rind adds aromatic oils.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that infuses into the syrup during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly. As water evaporates, sugar concentration rises and the mixture can scorch on the base of the pan. Constant stirring keeps it from sticking and burning and helps it cook evenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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