Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce

A cooked apple puree with lemon juice, water, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple

  1. Wipe, quarter, core, and peel the apple.

Cook the sauce

  1. Add the water and cook until the apple begins to soften.

  2. Stir in the sugar and flavoring, and cook until thoroughly soft.

  3. Press through a strainer and beat well.

Alternative: syrup method

  1. Alternatively, make a syrup with the water and sugar, then gently cook the apple pieces in it until tender.

  2. Remove the apple pieces from the syrup without breaking them and arrange on a saucer.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Lemon + sugartop 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

Apple
Supplies the pectin and pulp that thicken and give the sauce its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apple.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the apple's colour fresh.

The step that matters

Cooking until thoroughly soft. Apple pectin only sets and softens fully after prolonged cooking, so stopping early leaves a grainy, lumpy sauce. Pressing through a strainer after cooking removes the remaining fibres and skins for a smooth texture.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More apple sauce recipes

Cake 57Baked 20Brown 15Dried 8Cider 7Spiced 5 See all 252 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes