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Dessert

Spiced Apples

A preserved apple dish cooked with water, cloves, cinnamon, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the apples

  1. Place the apples in a preserving kettle and add enough water to cover them halfway.

  2. Add 3 cups of water, cloves, and cinnamon tied in a bag.

  3. Cover tightly and cook until the apples are tender.

Finish the syrup

  1. Carefully remove the apples and boil the syrup a little longer.

  2. Pour the syrup over the apples to retain their 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into tender fruit as they cook gently in liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup that the apples absorb.
Cloves
Add a pungent, warm aroma to the syrup that the apples absorb.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the apples and boil the syrup a little longer. Tender apples break apart easily, so lifting them out gently keeps them whole. Boiling the syrup on its own without the fruit concentrates its flavor and thickens it before it is poured back over the apples.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Applethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, vinegar. 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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