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Dessert

Apple Cream

Apple Cream is a gelatin-based dessert made from cooked apples, sugar, lemon, cream, and optional coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the apples, quarter them and core them.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with sugar and the rind and juice of the lemon.

  3. Simmer gently until the apples are soft.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a bowl.

  5. Chill the mixture until cold.

Make and set the cream

  1. Whisk the cream to a firm froth.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in a little boiling water.

  3. Add the dissolved gelatine to the apple pulp.

  4. If desired, color a portion of the mixture with cochineal.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  6. Set the mold on ice.

  7. Add the white portion to the mold.

  8. Serve cold.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Cooking apples
Cook down to a soft pulp that gives the cream its body and fruit flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Gelatine
Sets the chilled mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Whipped to a firm froth, it adds lightness and richness to the set dessert.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity and its rind adds aroma to the apples.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully in boiling water before adding it. Gelatine only sets when fully dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules leave specks or weak patches, so the mold may not hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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