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Dessert

Stewed Apples

Stewed apples flavored with lemon juice and rum, sweetened with sugar, preserved in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and rum work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Stewed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and quarter the apples, removing the core and seeds.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with a little water.

  3. Heat gradually until boiling.

Cook and flavour

  1. Once soft, add lemon juice, rum, and dissolved sugar in water.

  2. Boil briefly.

Jar and store

  1. Pour into jars and cover with jam covers.

  2. Store in a dry place until ready to use.

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 + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. 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

Sweet apples
Provide the bulk of the dish, softening into a tender, spoonable texture when cooked.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the cooked apples.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Rum
Adds aroma and warm flavour to the finished apples.

The step that matters

Heat gradually until boiling. Heating slowly lets the apple pieces soften evenly through to the centre without breaking down into mush or scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, rum, 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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