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Dessert

Apples, Baked

Apples baked with egg whites, sugar, and optional jam, butter, or brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and blackberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apples, Baked

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

  1. Pare and core the apples, keeping them whole.

  2. Roll up the apple peel tightly and place it in the center of each apple.

Coat the apples

  1. Brush the apples with egg whites and let them dry.

  2. Re-coat the apples with egg whites.

  3. Sprinkle the apples with castor sugar.

Bake and fill

  1. Place the apples in a pie dish.

  2. Cover the apples with greased paper.

  3. Bake the apples at 300°F (150°C) until tender.

  4. Remove the apple peel from the apples.

  5. Fill the cavity of each apple with your choice of jam or jelly.

  6. Add a small piece of butter to each apple.

  7. Add some brown sugar to each apple if desired.

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 + blackberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Blackberry + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main structure and soft, moist flesh that becomes tender when baked.
Egg whites
Form a thin coating that sets when heated, helping the sugar stick and glaze the skin.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the coated surface brown and turn glossy in the oven.
Jam or jelly
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour to the cavity as the apples bake.

The step that matters

Let the first egg white coat dry before re-coating. A dry first layer gives the second coat something to bond to. Egg white proteins set when heated, so the two coats form an even, glossy shell instead of patchy, sticky spots.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, blackberry, 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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