Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Wipe, quarter, core, and peel the apples.
Make the syrup
In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water with the lemon shavings for 7 minutes to make a syrup.
Remove the lemon shavings and add enough apples to cover the bottom of the saucepan.
Cook and finish
Cook the apples carefully until they are soft.
Remove the cooked apples from the saucepan.
Repeat until all apples are cooked.
Strain the remaining syrup over the cooked apples.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sour apples
- Provide the main body and tart flavour that the sauce is built on.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps the apples soften and take on flavour.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus note to the syrup.
The step that matters
Cook the apples carefully until they are soft. Cooking gently over moderate heat lets the apples soften evenly without scorching or breaking down unevenly. Apples held at a steady simmer in syrup keep their shape better and absorb flavour.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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