Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Ginger

A preserve of apples boiled in a sugar syrup with ginger.

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

Why it works: Apple and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,424 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Apple Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water until it forms a rich syrup.

  2. Add the ginger when the syrup boils.

Cook the apples

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

  2. Dip the apple pieces in cold water to preserve their color.

  3. Boil the apples in the syrup until they are transparent, being careful not to let them break.

Jar and seal

  1. Put the apple pieces into jars and pour the syrup over them.

  2. Cover the jars well to exclude air.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Hard apples
Provide the fruit body, which softens and turns translucent as it cooks in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Forms the thick syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Tincture of ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the apples gently in the syrup. Apple pieces must cook until translucent, which means the sugar has moved into the fruit. Vigorous boiling breaks the softened cell walls and turns the pieces to mush.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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 PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes