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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish sweetened with sugar and optionally nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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. Wash and wipe the apples, then cut out the blossom end.

  2. Place the apples in a granite or porcelain baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of sugar on each apple.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours for sour apples or 6 hours for sweet apples, adding water if necessary.

  2. If the apples brown too much, turn them over.

  3. Ensure there is ½ inch of moisture in the dish when done.

  4. Alternatively, core sour apples and fill the cores with sugar mixed with nutmeg, then bake as directed.

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 + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Their flesh softens during long baking while the sugar and their own juices form a syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps form a syrupy liquid and light browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Keeping moisture in the dish. Long baking can dry the apples and scorch their surface, so the dish must keep about half an inch of liquid; adding water as needed prevents sticking and burning.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Nutmegthe 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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