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Dessert

Cheese Surprise

A chilled dessert of steamed apples topped with seasoned cream cheese, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 515 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cheese Surprise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. Steam the apples in a syrup made of sugar and boiling water until soft.

  3. Once cool, chill the apples thoroughly in the refrigerator.

Assemble and serve

  1. Season the cream cheese with coarse sea salt and paprika, then mix until soft.

  2. Cover the chilled apples with the cheese mixture.

  3. Chill again before serving on a bed of lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Apple + cream cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + cream cheesetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,791 recipes

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

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

Tart apples
Hold their shape during steaming and provide a tart contrast to the sweet syrup and creamy cheese.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup in which the apples are steamed, adding sweetness to the fruit.
Cream cheese
Forms the creamy, mild topping that covers the chilled apples.

The step that matters

Steaming the apples until soft. Apples that are undercooked stay firm and resist softening, while overcooked ones fall apart. Steaming in syrup cooks them gently and evenly, so they stay intact and tender enough to eat.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cream cheese. 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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