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Dessert

Stewed Fruit

A dish of assorted fruit simmered with water and sugar, optionally spiced with cloves or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the fruit in a stew pan.

  2. Add a small amount of water and sugar to taste.

  3. Cover with a lid and stew until the fruit is tender.

  4. If using apples, add cloves; if using rhubarb, add lemon.

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 + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Clove + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Apple + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 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

Assorted fruit
Forms the body of the dish and softens into a tender, spoonable texture as it stews.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the natural tartness of the fruit.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apple, lemon, rhubarb):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple, lemon, rhubarb. 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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