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Dessert

Apple Cheese

Apple Cheese is a dessert made from apples, sugar, and lemon, cooked until soft and thickened.

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 Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Grate the lemon rind and squeeze out the juice.

Make the apple cheese

  1. Cut the apples into pieces and cook them gently with the sugar and lemon until soft.

  2. Beat the mixture until thick and smooth.

  3. Dip a mold in cold water, pour in the apple mixture, and let it cool.

  4. Turn it out when cold and serve with custard or cream.

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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the dessert and pectin that helps it set firm when cooled.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it cooks down.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma, brightening the sweet apple flavour.

The step that matters

Cook gently until soft. Cooking over low heat softens the apples evenly and lets the sugar dissolve without scorching. High heat can burn the sugar and leave the texture uneven before the mixture is beaten and molded.

Swap the lemon

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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