Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Apple and Blackberry Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the fruit
Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).
Pare, core, and quarter the apples. Use fine, just ripe blackberries.
Bake the fruit in a jar or cook in a jam kettle until soft.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and weigh the pulp.
Make the cheese
Add 13 ounces of sugar for each pound of pulp and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Stir in the hot sugar and boil for nearly another hour.
Store
Use small, dry, hot jars for storage.
Cover with a thin sheet of paper dipped in salad oil when 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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Blackberries
- Provide the main flavour and colour, and their pectin helps the pulp thicken as it cooks.
- Apples
- Add natural pectin and body, helping the fruit set into a firm, sliceable paste.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, as it cooks down, helps the mixture thicken and keep well.
The step that matters
Boiling the pulp with sugar. Sugar and pectin only set when the mixture is cooked long enough to reach a high concentration. Stopping early leaves a runny cheese, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.
“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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