Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Ginger

A preserve made from apples, ginger, and sugar, boiled with apple peels and cores.

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

Why it works: Apple and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,424 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Apple Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bruise the whole ginger well and wrap it in muslin.

  2. Peel, core, and slice the apples; slice the preserved ginger.

  3. Boil the apple peels and cores in enough water to cover them, then strain the juice.

Make the preserve

  1. Pour the juice over the sliced apples and preserved ginger.

  2. Add the muslin-wrapped ginger to the mixture.

  3. Weigh the combined mixture and add an equal weight of sugar.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

  5. Remove the whole ginger before serving.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Provide the bulk of the preserve and natural pectin that helps it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and keep as the mixture reduces.
Whole ginger
Releases its warm, spicy aroma and flavour slowly into the juice while it simmers.
Preserved ginger
Adds sweet, concentrated ginger flavour and small pieces of texture to the preserve.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Apple preserves set through pectin, acid and sugar concentrating as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can darken and dull the flavour. Check for a set before stopping.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes