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Apple Sauce for Pork, Geese, &C

Apple sauce made with baking apples, lemon rind, cinnamon, cloves, water, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Apple Sauce for Pork, Geese, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the baking apples.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with lemon rind, cinnamon, cloves, and a small amount of water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover the pan and cook over medium heat until the apples are tender.

  2. Remove the peel and spices from the apples.

  3. Stir in a bit of fresh butter and sugar to taste.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + clovetop 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

Baking apples
Break down into soft pulp to form the sauce's body.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cook covered until the apples are tender. Gentle covered cooking with little water softens the apples through steam, so they break down evenly without scorching. Cooking too hot or uncovered for too long can burn the bottom of the pan before the fruit is soft.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, clove, butter, sugar. 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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