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Baked Apples with Blue Cheese, Black Pepper and Honey

This new spin on classic baked apples blurs the line between sweet and savory. Piquant blue cheese is the star here; fragrant spices and sweet honey play supporting roles. The apples are filled after baking and their warmth brings together all of the robust sweet-salty flavors.

By williamssonoma · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and blue cheese share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 4 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4.

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By williamssonoma. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cider + blue cheesetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Star anise + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Apple + cidertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Clove + star anisetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, honey, cider, clove, star anise, cinnamon, blue cheese):

  1. Pearbetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Grapebetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, honey, cider, clove, star anise, cinnamon, blue cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).