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Dessert

Baked Apples

Baked apples served with cream, milk, muffins, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked 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 and place them in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Fill the center of each apple with sugar and a small piece of butter.

  2. Bake the apples until tender, about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and milk.

  2. Prepare muffins according to package instructions.

  3. Brew coffee and serve hot.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the main body of the dessert, softening as they bake while holding their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it melts into the centre, helps create a syrupy, browned filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting into the centre to moisten the apple flesh.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast to the warm baked apples when served.

The step that matters

Bake the apples until tender. Heat softens the starch and fibre in the apple flesh gradually. Stopping when the apples are tender, rather than only at a set time, keeps them soft without collapsing into mush or leaving the centre firm.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cream, milk, egg, coffee):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, milk, egg, coffee. 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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