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Dessert

Stuffed Apples

A baked apple dish filled with chopped apples, raisins, pecans, butter, and sugar, served with sherry‑flavored whipped cream and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Core the apples, removing as much of the inside as possible without making them too thin.

Stuff and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped apples, raisins, pecans, butter, and sugar.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the cored apples.

  3. Place the stuffed apples in a baking dish and add 1 teaspoon of sherry to each apple.

  4. Bake until the apples are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream mixed with a little sherry, and top each apple with a candied cherry.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Their flesh softens and turns tender as they bake, forming the body of the dish.
Raisins
Their natural sugars add sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Pecans
They add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the soft filling.
Butter
Its fat adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during baking.
Sherry
Its alcohol and flavour add aroma and depth to the apples and the whipped cream.

The step that matters

Core the apples without piercing the bottom. The cavity must hold the filling while the walls stay thick enough to keep their shape. If the walls are too thin or the base is broken, the filling leaks out and the apples collapse as they soften in the oven.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, butter, sugar, sherry, 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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