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Stewed Apples

Stewed apples cooked in a sugar and water syrup with lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

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

Cook

  1. Bring the syrup to a boil, then add the apples.

  2. Cook the apples carefully until they are tender but not broken.

Finish

  1. Remove the apples carefully, boil the syrup down a little, and strain it over the apples.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Provide the fruit that softens in the syrup and holds its shape when cooked gently.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the apples keep their flavour and form as they cook.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and forms the syrup that cooks and moistens the apples.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright aroma to the syrup that carries into the apples.

The step that matters

Cook the apples carefully until they are tender but not broken. Apples held at a gentle simmer soften through as pectin and cell walls break down slowly. A hard boil makes the pieces fall apart before they are evenly tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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