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Dessert

Elsinore Apples

Stuffed apples baked with mince meat, sugar, custard, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Elsinore Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and hollow out the apples.

  2. Drop the apples into boiling water for 1 minute to keep them white.

  3. Place the apples on a dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the center of each apple with 1 to 2 teaspoons of mince meat.

  2. Sprinkle castor sugar over the apples.

  3. Pour a small quantity of water around the apples.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with custard flavored with lemon.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

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

  5. Apple + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together787 recipes

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

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
Hold their shape as the filling bakes and soften into a tender base.
Mince meat
Provides the rich, sweet-spiced filling that flavours the hollowed apples.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Custard
Adds a smooth, creamy sauce that contrasts with the baked apples.

The step that matters

Dropping the apples into boiling water. A brief boil for one minute helps the apples keep their pale colour, since prolonged heat or cutting exposure can darken the flesh. Timing matters so they stay firm enough to hold the filling during baking.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, lemon. 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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