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Dessert

Butterscotch Apples

A sweet dish of apples simmered in butterscotch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Butterscotch Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash the apples, cut them into quarters, and remove the skin and core.

Cook the apples in syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar and water, and heat until boiling.

  2. Add the apples to the boiling syrup, cover, and simmer until tender.

  3. Remove the apples with a skimmer and place them in serving dishes.

Make and finish the sauce

  1. In another pan, mix the milk and corn starch until smooth.

  2. Stir and cook the mixture until it reaches a boil, then add it to the syrup with the apples.

  3. Boil for a few minutes, then stir in the salt, butter, and vanilla.

  4. Pour the sauce over the apples and serve hot or cold.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 and texture once cooked until tender in the syrup.
Brown sugar
Forms the sweet, caramel-flavoured syrup that the apples cook in.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the butterscotch sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it becomes a smooth, pourable sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a silkier, more rounded sauce flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing and cooking the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must be fully smoothed into the cold milk before heating, then brought to a boil, or it will form lumps instead of a smooth thickened sauce. Starch thickens only once heated enough to swell its granules.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, milk, corn, 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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