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Dessert

Stuffed Apples En Surpeise

A dessert of apples filled with a sweet apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Stuffed Apples En Surpeise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple sauce

  1. Pare, core, and cut the apples into eighths.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the apples, sweet cider, maple syrup, lemon slices, salt, butter, and nutmeg.

  3. Cook until the apples are soft, then rub the mixture through a sieve.

Fill the apples

  1. Take a thick slice from the stem end of the apples and scoop out the pulp, leaving apple cups.

  2. Fill the apple cups with the cooled apple sauce.

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 + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Apple + maple syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

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

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and the fruit flavour, and soften into the sauce when cooked.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and a rich caramel-like flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the apples are soft, then rub through a sieve. Apples must be fully softened so the mixture passes smoothly through the sieve; undercooked pieces stay firm and leave a grainy, lumpy sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cider, maple syrup, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cider, maple syrup, butter, nutmeg. 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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