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Dessert

Apple Gateau

A fruit cake of stewed apples, isinglass, and cream, garnished with dried cherries and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Apple Gateau

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Stew the apples with ½ cup of water, the rind and juice of ½ lemon, and 2 to 3 ounces of sugar until reduced to a pulp.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass in ½ cup of water; add it to the apple pulp and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a border mold and let it cool.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Once cooled, turn it out of the mold and fill the center with whipped cream until stiff.

  2. Scatter dried cherries and chopped pistachio kernels over the gateau.

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. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

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

Apples
Form the bulk of the pulp, providing the cake's flavour and body.
Isinglass
Gelling agent that lets the apple pulp set firm enough to turn out of the mold.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances the lemon's acidity.
Cream
Whipped to stiffness, it adds a light, rich filling for the center.

The step that matters

Dissolving the isinglass. Isinglass is a gelatin-like setting agent that must fully dissolve before it is mixed into the pulp; undissolved bits leave the gateau grainy and can prevent an even set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, cream, pistachio. 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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