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Steamed Sweet Apples

A simple dish of sweet apples steamed with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Steamed Sweet Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and core the apples.

  2. Place them in a porcelain-lined kettle.

  3. Fill the center hole with white sugar and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  4. Add a little warm water to the kettle.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the apples until soft, adding more water as needed to create juice.

  2. Keep the kettle covered while cooking.

  3. 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. 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

Fair sweet apples
Provide the main body and sweet flavour that softens as they steam.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw out juice as the apples cook.
Warm water
Creates steam and a small amount of juice so the apples cook gently without scorching.

The step that matters

Steam the apples until soft. Steaming must run long enough for the apples to soften fully, while adding water as needed prevents the kettle from drying out and scorching the bottom. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the apples cook evenly.

“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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