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To Butter Apples to Be Eaten Hot

A dish of apples buttered and simmered, then topped with apricot jam and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

To Butter Apples to Be Eaten Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core the apples without cutting through or separating them.

  2. Fill the cavities with fresh butter.

  3. Place the apples in a single layer in a stew-pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer gently, turning occasionally, until tender.

  2. Sift fine sugar and grated cinnamon over the apples and stew for a few minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the apples onto a hot dish.

  4. Fill each apple with hot apricot jam and add a small amount on top.

  5. Pour the syrup from the pan around the fruit and serve immediately.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cooking apples
Firm flesh holds its shape while the apples simmer until tender.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts inside the cored cavities.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps the syrup brown slightly as it stews.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the centres of the hot apples.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and turn occasionally. High heat can break the apples apart before they are tender. Gentle simmering with occasional turning cooks the flesh evenly while keeping each apple whole.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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