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Dessert

Everyday Preserves

A preserve made by boiling sweet apples in cider with sugar until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Everyday Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cider for 1 hour.

  2. Add the apples and sugar.

  3. Boil until the apples are cooked through and the same color.

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 + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Sweet apples
Provide the fruit body and flavor; slicing thin lets them cook evenly and soften in the syrup.
Sweet cider
Forms the liquid base that cooks the apples and concentrates into a syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as the liquid reduces.

The step that matters

Boiling until the apples are cooked through and the same color. Sugar and long boiling concentrate the cider into a thick syrup, and the apples must soften fully and take on even color. Stopping too early leaves firm, pale pieces and a thin, runny preserve.

“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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