Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sauce for Gebsh, Pork, &E.

Apple sauce for pork, made by boiling apples, mashing them, and adding sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Sauce for Gebsh, Pork, &E.

serves a good-sized tureen

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then soak them in cold water to preserve their whiteness.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the apples in a saucepan with enough water to moisten them and boil until soft enough to pulp.

  2. Mash the apples, adding sugar to taste and a small piece of butter.

  3. This quantity serves a good-sized tureen.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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
Break down into a soft pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Sifted sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until soft enough to pulp. Apples that are undercooked stay firm and grainy when mashed. Cooking them until fully tender lets the pulp break down into a smooth sauce.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes