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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple baked apple dish with sugar, butter, cinnamon, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Core and peel the tart apples.

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

  3. Add a small piece of butter and sprinkle cinnamon on top of each apple.

  4. Pour a little boiling water into the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the apples are cooked through and browned.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Tart apples
Provide the main body and tart flavor that holds shape while baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling caramelize and brown in the cores.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor and helps the apple surfaces brown.
Boiling water
Creates steam and moisture in the dish so the apples cook through evenly.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through and browned. Apples need enough time for the flesh to soften fully throughout, since underbaked centers stay firm. Browning depends on sugar and heat, so the cook should check both the tenderness and the color before removing the dish.

Swap the apple

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

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

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