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Dessert

Stewed Apples

Stewed apples are apples cooked slowly in water and sugar until tender, served cold.

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 ↓

Stewed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the apples dry and cut them in half without peeling.

  2. Place the apple halves in a shallow stew pan, skins down.

Stew and serve

  1. Add enough water to cover the apples and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Stew slowly until the apples are tender, ensuring they do not touch each other.

  3. Remove the apples to a dish and pour the syrup over them.

  4. 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

Apples
Hold their shape while softening, and provide the fruit flavour and texture of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the cooking liquid around the apples.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender. Gentle, slow heat softens the apple flesh while helping the halves keep their shape. Vigorous boiling can break the fruit apart. Keeping the halves separated lets heat and syrup reach every surface 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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