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Baked Apples

Baked apples are apples baked with sugar, lemon peel, and water until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the apples, then cut out the cores and remove all seeds and husks.

  2. Cut off any dark spots on the outside of the apples.

  3. Place the prepared apples in a granite or earthenware dish.

Bake

  1. Add ½ to 1 teaspoon of sugar and a bit of lemon peel into each apple.

  2. Pour boiling water into the dish until it’s about ¼ inch deep.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the apples are perfectly soft, which may take 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the type of apple.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Provide the main body of the dish, softening as they bake into a tender, spoonable flesh.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cut apple flesh caramelise slightly at the edges.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavour and balance the sweetness.
Boiling water
Creates steam and moisture in the dish so the apples bake gently without drying out.

The step that matters

Bake until perfectly soft. Apple varieties differ in density, so the bake time can range from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Testing for softness rather than trusting the clock ensures the flesh cooks through, as starch and cell walls break down with heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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