Skip to main content
Main

Apples

A simple dish of sliced apples served with cream, sugar, and orange juice.

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

Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apples

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wipe apples clean with a damp towel.

  2. Slice the apples.

  3. Serve with cream.

  4. Peel bananas.

  5. Slice bananas.

  6. Sprinkle lightly with sugar.

  7. Cover with orange juice.

  8. Layer sliced bananas with sections of oranges.

  9. Sprinkle sugar between layers.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

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

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

Apples
Provides the main fruit body and a firm, tart texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat that softens the tartness of the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out some of its juice as it sits.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and aroma and slows browning of cut fruit.

The step that matters

Cover with orange juice. Cut apples and bananas brown quickly as their exposed flesh oxidises. The acidic juice coats the slices and slows this browning, so covering them promptly keeps the fruit looking fresh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cream, 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.

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes