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Dessert

Apples, Frosted

Apples, Frosted is a dessert of boiled apples coated in clarified butter and sugar, then baked until frosted.

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 ↓

Apples, Frosted

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Simmer the apples gently in a pan of cold water with alum and vine leaves until the skins can be easily removed.

  2. Remove the skins from the apples.

Coat and bake

  1. Dip each apple in clarified butter.

  2. Sprinkle the apples with crushed white sugar.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the sugar sparkles like frost.

Cool and serve

  1. Let the apples cool completely.

  2. Place them on a glass dish, piling them high.

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. Butter + sugartop 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 cooking and provide the soft, tart fruit base of the dessert.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the sugar coating brown and crisp in the oven.
Crushed white sugar
Forms a crisp, sparkling coating that caramelises lightly during baking.
Alum
Firms the apple flesh so the fruit keeps its shape during simmering.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until the sugar sparkles like frost. A slow oven dries the sugar coating gradually so it turns crisp and sparkling without scorching. Too hot or too long can darken or burn the sugar before the apples are heated through.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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