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Dessert

Apple Gateau

A gelatin-based apple dessert with sugar, lemon, and optional custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Gateau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the gelatin with cold water.

  2. Slice the apples and put the sliced apples into a saucepan.

Make the apple mixture

  1. Add sugar, hot water, grated rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook slowly until the apples are tender, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Add the food coloring and dissolved gelatin to the apple mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Cool the mixture and pour it into a glass dish.

  2. Set in a cool place for four hours and serve with custard or cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Cox's gelatine
Sets the strained apple liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert.
Apples
Provide the main flavour and body once cooked and strained.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart apple and lemon mixture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved gelatin. Gelatin sets only when it is fully dissolved and the mixture is cooled enough not to melt it. Adding it to a very hot mixture can weaken the set, while adding it undissolved leaves gritty lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cream. 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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