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Dessert

Baked Apples with Syrup

Baked apples served with a sweet syrup made from sugar, cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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 the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wash, peel, and core the apples.

  3. Place the apples in a deep pie dish and fill it halfway with water.

  4. Add the sugar, cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg to the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the apples are soft and brown, and the syrup thickens.

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, becoming tender and turning the dish into a soft, fruity dessert.
Moist sugar
Dissolves into the water to form the syrup and adds sweetness and browning as it cooks.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the apples and syrup.
Cloves or nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that deepens the syrup.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are soft and the syrup thickens. As the water evaporates, the sugar concentrates into a thicker syrup and the apples keep softening. Pull them when tender and the syrup has thickened, since overbaking can make the apples collapse.

Swap the apple

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

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

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