Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Apple Sauce

A sauce made from dried apples and black raspberries, simmered and sweetened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Black Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak dried apples and black raspberries separately in water overnight.

Cook

  1. Stew the soaked apples in water until half done.

  2. Add the raspberries (without juice) to the apples and continue cooking until both are nearly done.

  3. Sweeten to taste and simmer gently for a few more moments.

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 + 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

Dried apples
Break down into soft pulp to form the body of the sauce.
Dried black raspberries
Add tartness, color and aroma as they soften into the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the raspberries without juice. Raspberries cook down quickly and can turn the sauce watery or overly tart if their juice is added or they are cooked too long. Adding them partway through lets both fruits finish together.

“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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes