Skip to main content
Dessert

Stewed Pippins

Stewed pippins are apples simmered in water, sweetened with sugar, optionally flavored with lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Pippins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pippins quickly with cold water.

  2. Soak the pippins in a quart of fresh water for 1 hour.

Stew the apples

  1. Place the pippins by the stove to heat gradually.

  2. When they begin to soften, add sugar to sweeten to taste.

  3. Optionally, add lemon rind for flavor.

  4. For a different method, bake them slowly in a covered jar.

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Pippins
Apples are the main ingredient; as they soften and cook down, they become the stewed fruit itself.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the apples.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright aroma and citrus flavor to the stewed apples.

The step that matters

Heating the pippins gradually. Starting the apples in cool water and heating them slowly lets them soften evenly without breaking apart or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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 stewed apples recipes

with Custard 4for Tarts 3with Butter 3 See all 88 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes