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Dessert

Oxford Apples

A baked apple dessert topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oxford Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Boil the apples in a small amount of water until soft.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the apples and mix in the butter, sugar, bread crumbs, and egg yolks.

  2. Beat the egg whites until light and fold them into the apple mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Top and bake

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites with powdered sugar and spread it over the apple mixture.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the meringue is browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Tart apples soften into a moist, tangy base that gives the dish its body and flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the apple mixture as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped, they form the light meringue topping and add lift to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the apple juices and help thicken the mashed filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold the whites in gently so the trapped air bubbles stay intact. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the filling loses its lightness and rises less in the oven.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, bread, egg. 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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