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Dried Apple Sauce

A sweet sauce made from dried apples, raisins, sugar, and lemon, simmered slowly in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,920 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dried Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine dried apples and raisins in a crock.

  2. Add plenty of water and place on the back of the stove.

Cook

  1. Let it boil slowly for the entire day.

  2. When almost done, add the sliced lemon and sugar.

  3. Add hot water as needed to maintain consistency.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Dried apples
Provide the main body and flavor that cook down into the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a deeper fruity flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that lifts the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the slow boil going. Cooking slowly over long hours softens the dried fruit fully without scorching. Adding hot water as needed keeps the sauce loose, since dried fruit keeps absorbing liquid as it cooks.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, 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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