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Fried Apples

Fried apples are cooked in a skillet with sugar, lard, butter, and water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, lard, butter, and water in a skillet.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook the apples

  1. Add the sliced apples to the boiling syrup.

  2. Cover and cook until the apples are tender and light brown.

  3. Alternatively, slice the apples directly in the skillet, add a little grease and sugar to taste, cover, and fry until done.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Cooking apples
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and, as it cooks, helps them take on a light brown color.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the apples fry rather than stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, buttery aroma to the syrup.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that coats and cooks the apples.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until tender and light brown. Cooking too briskly or too long can break the apples down into mush before they brown. Keeping the heat moderate lets the slices soften through while the sugar in the syrup gradually caramelizes on their surfaces.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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