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Dessert

Baked Stuffed Apples

A baked apple dish filled with sugar, lemon juice, and topped with whipped cream and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Stuffed 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 fill them with sugar.

  3. Place the apples in a baking pan and add enough hot water to cover the bottom.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice to the water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the apples carefully, basting often, until tender but not broken.

  2. Remove the apples to a dish and pour the baking syrup over them.

  3. Before serving, pour 1 pint of whipped cream mixed with ½ cup of chopped English walnuts over the apples.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,051 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender fruit during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a syrup with the juices as the apples bake.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavor and helps keep the apple flesh fresh-tasting.
Whipped cream
Adds a cool, rich fat layer that contrasts with the warm, tender baked apples.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor against the soft apples and cream.

The step that matters

Bake the apples carefully, basting often, until tender but not broken.. Apples held at steady heat and basted with the pan liquid cook evenly and keep their shape. Overbaking or letting them dry out causes the skins to split and the flesh to collapse.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cream, walnut. 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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