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Dessert

Iced Apples

Baked apples filled with sugar, butter, and nutmeg, then iced with caking-ice and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Iced Apples

12 large apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven.

  2. Pare and core the apples.

  3. Fill each apple with sugar, a little butter, and nutmeg.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake until nearly done.

  2. Let cool and transfer to another plate without breaking them, or pour off the juice if necessary.

  3. Ice the tops and sides with caking-ice and brown lightly.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the fruit base that softens during baking and holds the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling caramelize and brown on the surface.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the soft baked fruit.
Caking-ice
Forms a sweet coating on the outside that browns lightly in the oven.
Cream
Adds cool richness that balances the sweet, warm apples.

The step that matters

Ice the tops and sides and brown lightly. Sugar icing burns quickly at high heat, so the apples should be watched closely while browning. Removing them once the icing is lightly golden keeps the coating sweet rather than bitter.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, nutmeg, cream. 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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