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Cider Apple Sauce

A sauce made by boiling cider, adding apples, and simmering for hours, optionally flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cider Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cider until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Add enough apples to fill the kettle.

  3. Stew over moderate heat for 4 hours.

  4. Add cinnamon if desired.

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. Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cider + cinnamontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

New cider
Forms the liquid base that reduces and concentrates into a sweet, tart sauce.
Apples
Break down during long stewing, thickening the mixture and adding body and fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stew over moderate heat for 4 hours. Long, gentle cooking lets the apples soften and break down while the cider concentrates. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugars at the bottom of the kettle and burn the sauce, so it needs regular stirring and a low-to-moderate simmer.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, apple):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, apple. 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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