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Dessert

Apple Sauce

Apple sauce made from peeled, quartered apples cooked with water, mashed, and optionally flavored with currant jelly and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Add a little water and cover the pot.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the apples are tender.

  4. Mash the apples until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve with roasted pork, goose, or other meats.

  2. For a variation, stir in half a tumbler of currant jelly and half a tumbler of port.

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 + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rich tart apples
Provide the main body and tart flavor that the sauce is built from.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy set when stirred into the sauce.
Port
Adds depth and a fruity, wine-like aroma to the variation.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the apples are tender. Cooking gently with a lid until the apples soften lets them break down evenly. Too high a heat can scorch the bottom before the apples are soft enough to mash smooth.

“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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