Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce

Apple sauce is a sweetened apple puree cooked with sugar, water, lemon peel, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Combine sugar and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

  3. Add the apples to the liquid.

  4. Cover and cook until the apples are tender.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

  6. Slice additional apples.

  7. Add just enough water to prevent burning.

  8. Stir in grated lemon peel.

  9. Cook until soft.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mash the apples to a paste.

  2. Sweeten with sugar.

  3. Add butter.

  4. Add nutmeg.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into the soft, pulpy body of the sauce as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and rounds out the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the flavour of the apples.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, spicy aroma that complements the cooked apples.

The step that matters

Add just enough water to prevent burning. Sugar and fruit scorch quickly on the bottom of a pan when dry. A small amount of water creates steam that cooks the apples gently, while too much makes the sauce thin and watery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, nutmeg. 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.

More apple sauce recipes

Cake 57Baked 20Brown 15Dried 8Cider 7Spiced 5 See all 252 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes