Name: To Bake Apples for Children
Ingredients: 12 large apples; sugar; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon; water; cream

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Apples for Children

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 the tin

Core the apples but do not peel them.
Fill the holes with plenty of sugar.
Strew a baking tin with sugar.
Pour a little water on the tin.
Place the apples in the tin.

Bake and serve the jelly

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly done.
Scrape the jelly from the tin.
Serve the jelly with the apples.

Refill, ice and finish

Pare and core the apples.
Fill the apples with sugar, butter, and nutmeg or cinnamon.
Bake until just done.
Let the apples cool.
Transfer them to another dish without breaking.
Prepare icing and spread it on the top and sides of the apples.
Return the apples to the oven to brown slightly.
Serve with cream.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples: Form the main body of the dish, softening as they bake while holding their shape.
Sugar: Sweetens the apples and the syrupy jelly that forms in the tin.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, enriching the flavour of the baked filling.
Nutmeg or cinnamon: Adds warm aromatic spice that complements the baked apple flavour.
Cream: Adds richness and cooling contrast when served with the warm apples.

The step that matters

Transfer the apples without breaking. Baked apple flesh softens and can split when hot. Letting the apples cool firms them, so they hold their shape when moved to another dish for icing.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Raisinfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, nutmeg, 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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To Bake Apples for Children