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Baked Apples with Cream of Wheat

Baked apples served with cream of wheat and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Cream of Wheat

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. Pare and core the tart apples.

  3. Fill the cavities with sugar and add a few spoonfuls of water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until tender, turning occasionally to keep them whole.

  2. Serve hot, filling the centers with well-cooked cream of wheat and top with whipped cream.

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

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

  2. Apple + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together205 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  4. Cream + wheattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + wheattop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Tart apples
Provide the fruit that softens into the tender, baked body of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps form a syrupy juice in the cavities.
Cream of wheat
Fills the cored centers, adding a soft, starchy body to each apple.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and cool richness that contrasts with the hot apples.

The step that matters

Turning occasionally to keep them whole. Apples soften as they bake and their skins can split or collapse if heated unevenly or left unturned. Turning them helps the heat reach all sides evenly so they hold their shape while becoming tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, wheat. 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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