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Dessert

Good Family Apple Sauce

A sweet apple sauce made with water, molasses, ginger, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,424 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Good Family Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine 2 quarts of water, 1 pint of molasses, and 1 root of ginger.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

Cook the apples

  1. Add 1 peck of prepared apples while boiling.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 hours.

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. Ginger + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down during long simmering to form the sauce's body and texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and contributes flavor to the sauce.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 hours. Once the apples go in, a gentle simmer keeps the liquid from scorching on the bottom of the pot while the fruit slowly softens. A hard boil can burn the sugars in the molasses and cook off too much liquid before the apples break down.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, ginger):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, ginger. 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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