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Drink

Apple Toddy

A warm alcoholic beverage made with apple brandy, rum, baked apples, sugar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple brandy and apple work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 38 recipes. Both carry hexanol, which smells green, fruity. The science ↓

Apple Toddy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bake the apples until they are large and perfect, ensuring they are not broken.

Make the toddy

  1. In a large container, combine the apple brandy, rum, and sugar.

  2. Once the mixture is cold, drop in the baked apples.

  3. Add the boiling water and stir well.

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 brandy + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  2. Rum + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Apple brandy + rumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

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

Apple brandy
Provides the main spirit base and apple flavor throughout the drink.
Rum
Adds body and a second layer of spirit flavor to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the strength of the alcohol.
Baked apples
Contribute cooked apple flavor and soften as they sit in the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Pouring boiling water into a cold mixture is the step that needs care, since the heat warms the drink and dissolves the sugar. Stir well so the sugar fully dissolves and the drink is evenly mixed rather than sweet in some spots and weak in others.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Applethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Pineapplefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple brandy, rum, 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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