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Dessert

Baked Sweet Apples

A simple baked apple dish with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Sweet Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wipe and core the apples.

  2. Place them in a baking dish and fill the cavities with sugar.

Bake

  1. Add boiling water to the dish and cover it.

  2. Bake for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C), adding more water if necessary.

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. 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

Sweet apples
Soften as they bake, becoming tender and giving the dish its main body.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and dissolves into syrupy juices in the cavities as they bake.
Boiling water
Creates steamy moisture in the covered dish, keeping the apples from drying out during the long bake.

The step that matters

Adding boiling water and covering the dish. Covering the dish traps steam, which cooks the apples gently and keeps them moist over a long, low bake. Without enough water the dish can dry out and scorch, so check and top up as needed.

“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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