This month’s pairing of rose and apple seems to have produced a bunch of interesting dishes, mostly desserts. Two common observations or problems seem to be that the rose flavour tends to ”fall flat” on its own, and that it is hard to get the amount exactly right – neither too weak nor overpowering.

Pablo at Medellitin notes that apart from Persian and Middle Eastern food, nature has already put together the obvious combination – the South Asian rose apple, which is neither but tastes of both – and concludes that the pairing is ”a lay up”. If you happen to find some of these fruits, he helpfully points to some recipes.

Martin at Khymos actually managed to cook something suitable already for TGRWT #16 – rose foam sprinkled with apples, celery and pepper – as part of his roast chicken dish.  Having discovered that the foam could be frozen, for TGRWT #17 he chose to develop it into a frozen ‘rosy apple foam’ dessert. The verdict: the frozen foam had a very nice aroma and a good rose-apple flavour balance. However, he cautions – there were some problems related to after-taste, probably from the xanthan gum, and he recommends some further tweaking before making larger amounts of the foam (see the comments on the post for some inspiration on how to tweak and substitute).

Shuunya at Fast, Cheap and Good also used a rose foam, in her ”humble peasant version” of the El Bulli Steamed Brioche with Rose Scented Mozzarella – a steamed brioche filled with apple puree and decorated with rose foam. Although the brioches didn’t turn out perfectly the first time, Shuunya thought that the apple puree and rose foam went great together – ”like eating baked apple in a rose garden” – and she will try to perfect the dish since she feels it would make ”a great show-stopping dessert”. Planned changes include upping the ante on the rose taste by using rose essence instead of rose water.

Yannik T. H. Schelske made a Cox orange apple and almond pie paired with two kinds of soft semolina foam: rose and lemon-mint. The foam, inspired by a Finnish recipe (note to Swedish readers: probably similar to ”klappgröt” , in Finnish called vispipuuro/lappapuuro/marjapuuro), refused to become especially foamy – rather, it became gooey and chewy. Also, he found the flavour pairing less than optimal and will probably not cook with roses again: ”the 17th round of TGRWT convinced me, that one should not use roses for cooking. The taste, if you can distinguish it from other flavors, is just not worth it”.

Gfron1 at The Curious Blogquat tried two different desserts – very yummy-looking fried apple strings with a rose geleè sphere, and an apple rose cheesecake. A brave decision, for someone whose worst dessert ever apparently involved rose water! He also duly notes that it ”is very difficult to not have a rose dish turn into a potpourri disaster”. Nevertheless, both combinations seems to have worked well, probably best in the cheesecake. The sphere however, ”lacked pizazz” despite being spiced with telicherry black pepper. He concludes: ”I see the best use of this combination in a savory dish with these two as accents”.

Papin at Flavor Alchemy counters that since rose and apple is an obvious dessert pairing, it is much more fun to try out the pairing in a savoury dish. Sunny weather provided the inspiration for chorizo sausages with fennel, onion and Golden Delicious apple sauteed in Riesling wine and with a small amount of rose water added at the end.  The result was a subtle rose taste that Papin thinks may have helped make the apple flavour richer.

Adding some well-needed fibre to the setup, Carol Peterman made an apple rose granola from oats, dried rose petals and dried apples – with added taste notes from honey, cardamom, coconut and almonds, and fortified with rose water. Her (laudable) goal was ”to create something that didn’t make you think you were eating potpourri”. That seems to have worked very well: Carol confesses that she ”can’t stop snacking on it”, even if she would have liked the apple taste to be a little bit stronger than in the current version. For eager rose experimenters, she also has a great tip: you can buy dried rosebuds from online spice stores!

Efficient Alex at Cooking Sideways decided to celebrate National Whiskey Month and National Honey Week while also contributing to TGRWT – and concocted a rose and apple hot honey toddy which reportedly tastes great (but would be better – excellent, even – with ”a decent whisky or some proper heather honey”). No picture, so you’ll have to make it yourself to see what it looks like. Be warned, though: Alex says that ”the balance of rose is quite a delicate thing” also in this pairing. So, be careful with the rose water!

In keeping with the dessert consensus, Lisa and I made sweet dishes as well. Lisa put together an apple soup and French pairfait (rose-lemon-cardamom) combination that she did not like very much, even though the parfait turned out well (if somewhat lacklustre) on its own. Adding some rose water to the soup made things better, but the composition was still slightly unbalanced – Lisa calls it ”acceptable but not impressive”. Serving the parfait together with a rhubarb soup worked much better. Lisa also recommends using an extract of Japanese Rose (in Swedish: ”vresros”) instead of rose water, if you can find it.

I made muffins – cardamom muffins with rose-scented apple pieces and a tart rose-lemon buttercreme filling, to be exact. This was the result of trying a number of rose products and combinations without much luck. Most things turned out too sweet for my liking. That was the inspiration for a tart buttercreme;  I just added some cristalline citric acid (which also gives a really nice delayed tartness effect – since the buttercreme is low in water the acid does not dissolve until it meets saliva in the mouth, so you get the rose and lemon aromas first and the acidity after half a second or so). Overall, the combination of apple muffin and tart rose creme was tasty, and complex enough that I didn’t tire of it after one or two muffins, but without the lemon and cardamom it would have been boring – and without the citric acid to balance the sweetness it would likely have been inedible after a few bites. And getting the amount of rose flavour right was really tricky.

So, to conclude: apple and rose does not seem to be a stellar combination for most people – it either falls flat or becomes overpowering, and seems to need a few added tastes or aromas to really shine. But used sparingly, rose aroma might help round out the flavour of less aromatic apples, which is potentially very useful this time of year when the only apples in the store are rather bland imports from far away.

This edition (Swedish version here) of the food blogging, flavor-pairing event TGRWT – ”They Go Really Well Together” -  is devoted to one of the most chameleon-like of odorants: the elusive but potent beta-damascenone, which is important for the heady aroma of Damask roses. It is produced by degradation of carotenoids, which are common plant pigments, and thus it appears in many different foods and beverages.

Beta-damascenone has an unusually low threshold value, so it can be sensed even in very small amounts. That gives it a high odor activity value* in many of the foodstuffs it appears in, such as peaches, lychees, apples, grapes, potatoes, and many alcoholic beverages. It appears in the smell of roasted coffee, but does not seem to transfer well into the brewed cup – perhaps because of the molecule’s lack of polarity. Beta-damascenone appears in  many wines, especially red wines with berry notes, but in some instances it seems to enhance some wine notes (caramel, fruity) and suppress others (herbaceous), rather than have a clear character of its own.

Its many flavor notes are described so varyingly one might imagine the molecule darting tirelessly from one part of the odor spectrum to another: rose, honey, apple, woody, herbaceous, nutty, citrus, smoky, wine-like… But one of the more frequently recurring labels for beta-damascenone is ”apple”, and from that we have this month’s flavor pairing: roses and apples. Especially Damask (Rosa × damascena) or related roses and Cox Orange or Elstar apples. If you do not live somewhere with roses blooming in april, you can try other rose products – preferentially oil-based or with whole roses (such as rose jam). Feel free to add some wine to your dish if you like, in keeping with the theme.

This is how you can participate in TGRWT #17:

1. Prepare a dish that combines rose and apple. You can either use an existing recipe (if there is any) or come up with your own.

2. Take a picture of the dish and write an entry in your blog by May 8th with TGRWT #17 in the title. Readers will be particularily interested in how the flavour pairing worked out, so make an attempt at describing the taste and aroma and whether you liked it or not.

3. A round-up will be posted here (with pictures). Please send an email to malin (at) taffel (dot) se with the following details: Your name, URL of blog, URL of the TGRWT #17 post and a picture for your
entry in the round-up. If you don’t have a blog, email me your name, location, recipe and a brief description of how it worked out and I’ll be glad to include it in the final round-up.

*the OAV is a rough measure of the impact of an odorant’s intensity. A high OAV will likely overestimate the impact of an odorant, as explained here by Martin at Khymos – this is well illustrated by the debate on the role of beta-damascenone in wines.