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Dessert

Apple Ginger Paste

A preserved apple and ginger paste made with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Ginger Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Cover the apples with cold water in a pan and boil until soft.

  3. Pass the pulp through a sieve.

Make the paste

  1. Add the sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and ginger to the pulp.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

Mould and store

  1. Wet the molds carefully and fill them up.

  2. Cover with paper to keep well.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger 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

Baking apples
Provide the pulp that forms the body of the paste.
Cane sugar
Sweetens the paste and, as it cooks down, helps it set firm and keep well.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, and their juice helps balance the sweetness.
Whole ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the paste.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for about 1 hour. Sugar and fruit pulp must cook long enough to thicken and reach a concentrated, set consistency. Undercooking leaves the paste soft and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger. 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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