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Stewed Apples

Stewed apples simmered in a sugar‑water syrup with lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Stewed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples, or leave them whole if preferred.

Cook the apples

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the apples and lemon rind to the boiling mixture.

  3. Simmer gently until the apples are tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the apples and place them in a dish.

  2. Boil the syrup rapidly for 5 minutes and pour it over the apples.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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 fruit that softens during cooking and takes on the sweet syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens the syrup as it boils and reduces.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma from its fragrant oils.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the apples are tender.. Vigorous boiling can break the apples apart and cook their outsides before the centres soften. A gentle simmer lets heat reach the middle evenly, so the apples stay whole and tender.

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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