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Dessert

Baked Apples with Syrup

Apples baked with sugar, spices, and water to form a syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Syrup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and core the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a deep pie dish half filled with water.

  3. Add sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg to the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the apples are soft and brown and the syrup thickens.

  2. Let cool, then transfer to a glass dish and pour the syrup over the apples.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften as they bake and provide the main body of the dessert.
Moist sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sweetens and browns the apples.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the apples and syrup.
Cloves
Contribute a strong, warm aroma to the syrup.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet-spiced aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Baking until the syrup thickens. The apples must cook long enough to soften and brown while the sugar and water reduce into a syrup. Underbaking leaves the apples firm and the syrup thin, while overbaking can dry the syrup out and make the sugar darker and bitter.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. 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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