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Dessert

Apple Compote

A sweet fruit dish made by stewing apples in water, wine, sugar, and lemon, then served with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and white wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Place the apples in cold water.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the apple parings and seeds with 1 pint of water and 1 pint of white wine in a pot.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the liquid to the pot.

  5. Add ½ pound of white sugar and the peel of ½ lemon to the pot.

  6. Boil again.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the apples to the pot.

  2. Let them stew for 15 minutes until tender.

  3. Carefully remove the apples with a silver spoon.

  4. Place them on a platter to cool.

  5. Reduce the syrup by boiling it down to half the original quantity.

  6. Add the juice of ½ lemon.

  7. Arrange the apples in a fruit dish in a pyramid shape.

  8. Pour the syrup over them before serving.

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 + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens into the compote during stewing.
White sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body as it reduces.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Reduce the syrup to half. Boiling down concentrates the sugar and flavour of the syrup. Reducing too little leaves it thin and watery, while reducing too far can make it overly thick once it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, white wine, 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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