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Dessert

Iced Apples with Cream

A dessert of boiled apples topped with meringue and served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Iced Apples with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

Poach the apples

  1. Cook the apples in a syrup made of sugar and water.

  2. Drop the apples into the boiling syrup and cook until tender.

  3. Remove the apples and place them on a platter to cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover the cooled apples with a thin layer of meringue and brown it.

  2. Boil the syrup until reduced to ½ cup; let it cool to form a jelly.

  3. Cut the jelly into squares and place them over and around the apples.

  4. Serve cold with sugar and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

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

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
Hold their shape while poaching and provide the main body of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, when boiled down, sets into a clear jelly.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup the apples cook in.
Meringue
Adds a light, sweet topping that browns when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a cooling contrast to the cold apples.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup down to ½ cup. The syrup must be reduced far enough that its sugar concentration is high. As it cools, it sets into a jelly; if it is under-reduced, the squares will stay soft and runny.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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