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Dessert

A Nice Dessert Dish

A baked apple dessert with sliced apples, sugar, and water cooked slowly.

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 ↓

A Nice Dessert Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a quart bowl, layer the sliced apples and sugar alternately.

  2. Add the water and cover with a saucer, securing it with a weight.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for three hours.

  2. Let it cool completely 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. 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

Apples
Provide the bulk and soften into tender, flavorful fruit as they bake slowly.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and draws out their juices, forming a syrup as they cook.
Water
Adds moisture that creates steam and syrup, keeping the apples from drying out in the oven.

The step that matters

Let it cool completely before serving. The apples hold a hot, syrupy liquid that thickens as it cools. Serving too early means a runny, loose texture and a sharp, hot taste.

“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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