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Apple Sauce

A cooked apple puree sweetened with sugar and lemon, flavored with butter and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Place them in a jar with a little water to prevent burning.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook covered in the oven until they turn to a pulp.

  2. Add sugar, lemon juice, butter, and nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Rub through a sieve.

  4. Reheat before serving.

Variation

  1. For a plain sauce, omit the butter and mash without sieving.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Break down into pulp to form the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture and flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the apples.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cook covered in the oven until they turn to a pulp. Covering the jar traps steam so the apples soften evenly without drying or scorching. Cooking until fully broken down gives the smooth texture the sieve then refines.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, nutmeg. 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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