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Dessert

Apple Paste

Apple paste is a preserved apple pulp mixed with sugar, optionally colored with cochineal and flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core ripe apples and soak them in water until soft.

  2. Rub the apples through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

Make the paste

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the apple pulp with an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Set and finish

  1. Pour the paste onto tin plates or into molds.

  2. Optionally, add cochineal for color and lemon for flavor if the apples are tasteless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple pulp
Provides the bulk and natural pectin that helps the paste thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps the paste set firm and keep.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of mild or tasteless apples.
Cochineal
Adds a red colour to the paste.

The step that matters

Boil until the paste thickens. Apples contain pectin, which sets as water evaporates and sugar concentrates. Undercooked paste stays soft and runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar on the pan bottom, so stir often.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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