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Ipgied Apples

Apples sautéed in butter and sugar until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ipgied Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter and sugar in a pan.

  2. Wash and slice the apples thin.

  3. Add the apples to the hot butter and sugar.

  4. Turn the apples until they are lightly browned.

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. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple 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

Butter
Melts with the sugar to form a glossy caramel and adds richness to the apples.
Sugar
Melts and caramelizes in the butter, giving sweetness and golden browning on the apples.
Apples
Soften as they cook and take on caramel flavor and color from the butter and sugar.

The step that matters

Turn the apples until they are lightly browned. Sugar browns quickly once it caramelizes, so the apples can scorch if left too long. Stop when they are lightly golden for even color and flavor.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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