Name: Pommes a LA Mascotte
Ingredients: 12 large apples; 1 beaten egg; ½ cup centrifugal sugar; a few drops of vanilla; apricot jam; 3 tablespoons sieved apricot jam; pennyworth of well-whipped cream

Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 777 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the apples

Peel the apples very thinly and remove the cores with an apple corer.
Roll the apples in the beaten egg and then in the granulated sugar, adding vanilla to the egg.

Bake and serve

Arrange the apples in a well-greased paper soufflé case and bake at 300 °F (150 °C) for 30 minutes.
Once done, fill the center of each apple with sieved apricot jam.
For the sauce, heat 3 tablespoons of sieved apricot jam in a small pan, then stir in the whipped cream and serve around the apples.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together777 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together608 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Sugar + vanillatop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together35,031 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,501 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together43,437 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely 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 bulk of the dish, softening as they bake while holding their shape.
Beaten egg: Binds the sugar and vanilla to the apple surface and helps the coating set and brown.
Sugar: Sweetens the apple and caramelises slightly on the surface as it bakes.
Apricot jam: Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the filling and the warm sauce.
Whipped cream: Adds richness and a light, cool texture to the sauce served with the hot apples.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

Strawberrybetter flavor fit
Peachbetter flavor fit
Raspberrybetter flavor fit
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, apricot, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.