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Dessert

Nina's Apple Cream

A dessert made by boiling apples with sugar and lemon, then molding the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Nina's Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Slice them into a pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 2 hours.

  3. Turn it into a mold and serve with boiled custard or cream.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, thick pulp that forms the body of the cream.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps thicken the apples as the syrup reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic lemon oils that add fragrance to the apples.

The step that matters

Boiling for about 2 hours. Long, steady boiling evaporates water and concentrates the apple pulp and sugar until the mixture thickens enough to hold its shape in a mold. Stopping too early leaves it loose, while overcooking can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pan, so stir often and watch the heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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