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Dessert

Apple Sauce

Apple sauce made with apples, water, lemon, butter, currants, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 and cut the apples into pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine water, sliced apples, and lemon slices.

Cook and finish

  1. Add butter and boil until the apples are soft.

  2. Stir the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Mix in the currants and dissolved corn starch.

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).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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 pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it is dissolved in and heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished sauce.
Currants
Add tartness and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved corn starch. Starch must be fully dissolved before it goes in and the sauce must be heated for it to thicken. Adding it to hot liquid without dissolving it first can cause lumps.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, butter, corn. 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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