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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish with sugar, spice, butter, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the apples and remove the cores without breaking them.

  2. Place the apples in a pan just large enough to hold them.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the cores with sugar, add a little spice and a small piece of butter on each apple.

  2. Pour the hot water into the pan.

  3. Bake the apples until tender in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Carefully transfer the apples to a serving dish without breaking them.

  2. Pour the juice from the pan over the apples and serve hot or cold.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Apples
Hold their shape while softening, becoming tender and sweet as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, as it melts, forms a syrup with the pan juices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the apple flesh as it melts.
Hot water
Creates steam and a liquid base in the pan, keeping the apples moist while they bake.

The step that matters

Bake the apples until tender. Baking in a moderate oven softens the apple flesh gradually, so the apples stay whole. Too high a heat can split the skins and burst the cores before the centres are tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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