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Pretty Apples

Apples cooked in a sugar‑water syrup, then topped with almonds, cherries, nuts, bananas, marshmallows, and optional mint extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pretty Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water to make a syrup.

  3. Heat the syrup until it thickens slightly, then add the apples.

  4. Carefully turn the apples with a fork until they are tender.

Decorate and finish

  1. Remove from heat and place the apples on a platter.

  2. When cool, stick blanched almonds around the apples and fill the cavities with cherries and nuts.

  3. Cook the syrup until it jellies, then pour it over the apples.

  4. Alternatively, place the cored apples in hot syrup with maple syrup and fill the cavities with bananas.

  5. Turn the apples carefully until tender, then remove from heat and place a marshmallow on each apple.

  6. Brown the marshmallows in the oven.

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 + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Almond + bananatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Apple + maple syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

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

  5. Maple syrup + nutstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Hold their shape while cooking and soften to a tender texture in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as it cooks down, thickens it into a jelly-like glaze.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and a distinct caramel-like aroma to the alternative banana version.
Marshmallows
Soften and melt slightly in the oven, then brown on the surface for color and flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup until it jellies. Sugar syrup sets into a glaze only when enough water has evaporated and it reaches a high enough concentration. Too little cooking leaves a runny coating that will not cling to the apples, while overcooking can turn it hard or caramelized.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, maple syrup, almond, nuts, banana):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, maple syrup, almond, nuts, banana. 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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