Skip to main content
Main

Arple Toast

Apple Toast is a dish of sliced apples cooked with butter and sugar, served atop fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Arple Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Core, peel, and slice the apples into quarters.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 1 ounce of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the apples, 2 ounces of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of water to the saucepan.

  4. Cook the apples quickly, stirring occasionally, until tender.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Meanwhile, slice the bread into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. In a frying pan, melt 2 ounces of butter over medium heat.

  3. Fry the bread until it is a nice yellowish color and crisp.

  4. Remove the bread and place it on a dish, sprinkling with a little white sugar.

  5. Top the bread with the cooked apples and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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

Apples
Soften into a tender, sweet filling that tops the crisp bread.
Butter
Carries heat and adds richness, browning the bread as it fries.
Bread
Provides a crisp, golden base that holds the cooked apples.
White sugar
Sweetens the apples and adds a little sweetness to the finished toast.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until crisp and golden. Bread that is pale or under-fried will turn soggy under the apples. Medium heat and enough butter let the surface brown and dry out evenly, so the slices hold their crunch.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes