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Baking Apples for Pork Roast

A dish of baked apples served with pork roast, flavored with butter, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baking Apples for Pork Roast

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 the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare the baking apples and place them in a baking pan.

  3. Add butter and sugar over the apples.

  4. Pour enough water to create a sauce around the apples.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the apples are well done.

  2. Remove the apples and place them around the pork roast.

  3. Add brandy to the sauce and serve with the roast.

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 + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Good baking apples
Soften during baking and give the dish its main body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the apples brown and carry flavor in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce caramelize and brown as it bakes.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the sauce served with the roast.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are well done. Baking until the apples are fully soft lets their starch gelatinize and their sugars concentrate, giving a tender texture and a syrupy sauce. Stopping early leaves them firm and the sauce thin, while overbaking can make them collapse.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, brandy. 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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