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Dessert

Apple Sauce

Apple sauce made by cooking apples, adding sugar and gelatin, then cooling to set.

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 ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Cook the apples in boiling water until very tender.

  2. Stir the apples thoroughly to remove lumps.

Set the sauce

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in warm water and add it along with the sugar.

  2. Pour the sauce into bowls and let it cool until it sets like jelly.

  3. Add cinnamon if desired.

Cider version

  1. For cider apple sauce, boil the cider until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Add enough quartered apples to fill the kettle and stew for 4 hours.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Gelatin + saucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 pectin-rich body that becomes the sauce when cooked down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples.
Gelatin
Sets the sauce into a firm, jelly-like texture as it cools.
New cider
Adds concentrated apple flavour and liquid in the cider version.

The step that matters

Stirring the apples thoroughly. Stirring while the apples are very tender breaks them down evenly and removes lumps, giving a smooth sauce; lumps left at this stage cannot be fixed later.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, gelatin, cider, sauce, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, gelatin, cider, sauce, cinnamon. 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.

More apple sauce recipes

Cake 57Baked 20Brown 15Dried 8Cider 7Spiced 5 See all 252 →

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