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Dessert

Stuffed Baked Apples

A baked apple filled with raisins, nuts, cinnamon, and sugar, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Stuffed Baked Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Peel the apples and remove the cores.

  3. Fill each apple with raisins, nuts, cinnamon, and sugar.

  4. Place the apples in a baking pan with a little water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the apples are tender, basting frequently.

  2. Once cooled, top each apple with a spoonful of whipped cream and serve.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Large sweet apples
Form the main body and soften into a tender, sweet filling when baked.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture inside the apple.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, rich flavour contrast to the soft apple.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apple flesh caramelise slightly as it bakes.
Whipped cream
Adds cool, creamy richness that contrasts with the warm baked apple.

The step that matters

Basting frequently while baking. Apples dry out and their skins can toughen in dry oven heat. Spooning the pan liquid over them keeps the flesh moist and helps it cook evenly until tender.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, cinnamon, sugar, cream. 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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