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Dessert

Baked Apples with Syrup

A simple baked apple dish with sweet syrup made from sugar, spices, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Syrup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wash, peel, and core the apples.

  3. Place the apples in a deep pie dish and fill it halfway with water.

  4. Add the sugar and spices to the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the apples are soft and brown, and the syrup is thick.

  2. Let cool, then transfer the apples to a glass dish and pour the syrup over them.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Apples
Soften as they bake and hold their shape while releasing juice into the syrup.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as it dissolves and reduces, thickens the syrup and encourages browning.
Cinnamon, cloves, or nutmeg
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the apples and the syrup.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are soft and brown, and the syrup is thick. Underbaking leaves the apples firm and the syrup thin, while overbaking can dry the apples and scorch the sugar. Watching for softness and a thickened syrup shows when the sugar and water have reduced properly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. 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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