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Dessert

Baked Apples

A baked apple dish with sugar, cinnamon, raisins, walnuts, and butter, cooked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Baked Apples

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 the Bellefleur apples and cut them in half.

  2. Remove the core and place the halves side by side in a shallow baking dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Cover the apples with sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon.

  2. Add 1 cup of boiling water and a small piece of butter on each apple.

  3. Top each apple with a few raisins and cover with ground English walnuts.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until well done.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Bellefleur apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, juicy flesh when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple surfaces caramelise and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and enriches the juices pooling in the dish.
Ground english walnuts
Add a toasty, crunchy contrast to the soft baked apple.

The step that matters

Bake until well done. Apples must soften fully throughout; underbaked flesh stays firm and starchy. A hot oven cooks the fruit through while the sugar and butter caramelise, so check the centres are tender before serving.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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