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Dessert

Apple Sauce

A cooked apple dish flavored with salt, sugar, and optional butter, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the applesauce

  1. Wipe, pare, core, and slice the apples into a saucepan.

  2. Add enough hot water to prevent scorching and cover the saucepan.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook quickly until the apples are soft.

  4. Pass the cooked apples through a ricer or sieve.

  5. Add a sprinkle of salt and sugar to sweeten, then return to the heat.

  6. Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. If serving hot, add one tablespoon of butter before serving.

  2. Turn into a serving dish and sprinkle with cinnamon or nutmeg.

  3. If serving cold, omit the butter.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 juicy apples
Provide the main body, flavor, and tartness of the sauce once cooked and softened.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until fully soft before passing them through. Apples that are not fully softened will not pass smoothly through a ricer or sieve, leaving a lumpy, uneven texture. Cooking them quickly with a little water also prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon. 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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