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 ↓
Arrow-root Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Peel and quarter the apples.
Boil the apples in 1 quart of water with a little lemon peel until soft.
Remove the lemon peel before it becomes too strong.
Thicken and finish
In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of arrow-root with ½ teacup of cold water until smooth.
Gradually add 1 teacup of water to the arrow-root mixture, stirring continuously.
Pour the arrow-root mixture into the apple water and let it boil gently for 15 minutes.
Strain the mixture through a sieve.
Serve warm or cold.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Apples
- Provide the main flavour and body of the drink as they soften and release their juices.
- Arrow-root
- Thickens the liquid into a smooth, light, slightly silky texture when it is boiled.
The step that matters
Adding the arrow-root mixture. Arrow-root must be smoothed in cold water first and then stirred gradually into the hot liquid. Added dry or all at once, it clumps and stays lumpy instead of thickening evenly.
“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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