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Dessert

Spiced Apples

A dish of apples simmered in a spiced vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon. Bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

Cook the apples

  1. Wash, peel, and core the apples.

  2. Place the apples in the saucepan and pour the boiled vinegar mixture over them.

  3. Cover and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove the cover and continue boiling until the apples are tender.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender as it simmers in the spiced liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth to the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Remove the cover and continue boiling until the apples are tender. Apples must be cooked long enough for the pectin and cell walls to soften, but overcooking makes them mushy. Checking for tenderness with a fork or knife prevents both undercooking and collapse.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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