Stewed fruit mystery

Recipes, Cooking tips and maybe some 'Home Made' secrets !
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Mo
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Stewed fruit mystery

Post by Mo »

Can anyone tell me why the plums that are so good to eat raw need sugar when I cook them, but the Bramley apples that are so sharp they make your teeth curl if you eat them raw don't need sugar when cooked (late enough in the season - the windfalls and newly picked ones might).
Doesn't seem to make sense. I wonder every year. Have I asked this before?
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lancashire lass
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Re: Stewed fruit mystery

Post by lancashire lass »

this might get complicated and scientific but according to one line of thought, it isn't so much the amount of sugar that is in the fruit, but the volatile substances the fruit releases.

When you get a cold and your nose is blocked, food has no flavour. So when eating food, we are also smelling it as well as tasting. In this BBC article on "the smells that make sweet sweeter", one of the examples they used were 2 different tomato varieties. Both had similar sugar content but the one that tasted sweeter had higher volatile compounds.

Maybe that is the case with the plum and Bramley apple differences? When raw, apples don't really have much scent compared to something like a strawberry (and being green, we also visualise apples as being sour / not ripened so expect it to be so) When cooked, apples release aromas which are like comfort food smells (like apple pie) and quite different so taste sweeter? I'm not a plum fan but maybe cooking destroys some of those volatile compounds and hence needs more sugar. It's only a theory .... ^b:
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sandy
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Re: Stewed fruit mystery

Post by sandy »

Never thought of that, hmmm
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