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Dessert

Baked Apples

Baked apples with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, cloves, water, topped with sugar and glazed with egg whites and powdered sugar, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Wash and core the apples.

  3. Fill each cored apple with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and insert a clove into each apple.

  4. Place the apples in a deep dish and pour water into the dish.

  5. Sprinkle sugar on top of each apple.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake until the apples are tender and slightly broken.

  2. Carefully transfer the apples to a serving dish and pour the syrup over them.

  3. To glaze, beat the egg whites and mix with powdered sugar, then coat the apples.

  4. Return the glazed apples to the oven for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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, and their juices form the syrup that bastes the fruit.
Egg whites
Coagulate in the oven to form a light, set glaze over the apples.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavor to the filling and syrup.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness inside each apple.

The step that matters

Return the glazed apples to the oven for a few minutes. Egg white glaze can overbake quickly, turning dry, rubbery or browned. A short time at oven heat sets it into a light, glossy coating while the apples stay warm and tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, raisin, clove, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, raisin, clove, egg, cream. 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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