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Dessert

Apple Preserve

A sweet preserve made by cooking apples in sugar syrup until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine ¾ pound of sugar with enough water to make a syrup.

  2. Skim the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick.

Cook the apples

  1. Add a few apples at a time.

  2. Cook the apples until they are transparent.

  3. Place the cooked apples in a jar.

Pour and seal

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the apples.

  2. Cover tightly.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + appletop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Apples
Provide the fruit body of the preserve, softening and turning transparent as they cook.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until they are transparent. Apples must be cooked through so their cell walls soften and the fruit becomes tender and evenly preserved. Undercooked pieces stay firm and may not hold up in the syrup.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

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