Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Compote

A fruit compote made by stewing apples with water, wine, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and white wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the apples, then drop them in cold water.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pan, combine the apple parings, cold water, and white wine; boil for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve and return it to the fire with the sugar and lemon peel.

  3. Boil down the syrup to about half its original quantity and add the lemon juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the apples and stew slowly until tender.

  2. Place the cooked apples on a dish to cool.

  3. Pour the syrup over the fruit and serve.

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 + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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

Greenings apples
Provide the fruit that softens into the compote while holding its shape and tartness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the syrup and helps it thicken as it reduces.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the apple-flavoured syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Stew the apples slowly until tender. Gentle heat softens the fruit evenly without breaking it apart. Rapid boiling can turn the apples mushy or ragged before they are cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, white wine, 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.

More apple compote recipes

Baked 15with Preserves 4 See all 125 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes