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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple baked apple dish with sugar and water, served hot or cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Peel the apples, cut them into eighths, and core them.

  3. Place the apples in a 2-quart earthen dish.

Bake

  1. Add the light-brown sugar and water to the dish, then cover the dish.

  2. Bake the apples for 3 hours, or until they are red.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in the same dish with cream.

  2. Let cool and dust with powdered sugar for supper.

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 + 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

Firm tart apples
Provide the main body and fruit flavor, and soften into a tender, spoonable texture as they bake.
Light-brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel-like flavor, and dissolves with the water into a syrup that coats the apples.

The step that matters

Cover the dish before baking. The cover traps steam, so the apples cook gently in their own juices and the sugar syrup instead of drying out over the long bake.

“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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