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Dessert

Flaming Apples

A dessert of boiled apples served with a sweet syrup and flambéed with rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Flaming Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the apples

  1. Peel the small apples and arrange them in a stewpan.

  2. Cover the apples with water and add the grated rind, cinnamon, and plenty of sugar.

  3. Boil gently until the apples are cooked, being careful not to break them.

Plate and serve

  1. Cautiously remove the apples and arrange them in a pyramid on a dish.

  2. Reduce the boiling water to a thick syrup and pour it over the apples.

  3. Dust the apples with sifted sugar.

  4. Sprinkle rum over the apples and set on fire just before serving.

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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Apple + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Sugar
Sweetens the apples and, when boiled into syrup, adds body and gloss to the sauce.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour when set alight just before serving.
Small apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening as they are gently poached.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the apples are cooked. A rolling boil breaks the apples apart, while gentle simmering cooks them through and keeps their shape for the pyramid presentation.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, sugar, rum. 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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