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Dessert

Stewed Apples with Apricot Jam

Stewed apples with butter, sugar, cinnamon, served with apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Apples with Apricot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core the apples.

  2. Fill the cavities of the apples with fresh butter.

Stew

  1. Place the apples in one layer in a stew-pan.

  2. Add more butter to the stew-pan.

  3. Simmer gently, turning occasionally, until the apples are tender.

  4. Sift fine sugar over the apples.

  5. Sift cinnamon over the apples.

  6. Let the apples stew for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully lift the apples onto a hot dish without breaking them.

  2. Fill each apple with hot apricot jam.

  3. Add a small amount of jam on top of each apple.

  4. Pour the syrup from the pan around the fruit.

  5. Serve immediately.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main body of the dish, softening as they simmer until tender.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, enriching the apples and the syrup as they cook.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a syrup with the butter and juices in the pan.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice to the stewed apples.
Apricot jam
Adds sweet fruity flavour and a glossy finish when spooned hot into the apples.

The step that matters

Lift the apples without breaking them. Stewed apples soften as they cook, so they become fragile. Lifting them gently with a wide spatula while still hot, and supporting the whole fruit, keeps the shape intact for filling.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, sugar, cinnamon. 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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