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Dessert

Buttered Apples

A baked dish of tart apples topped with butter, sugar, apricot jam, and sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Buttered Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples without breaking them.

  2. Cut the bread into rounds large enough for each apple to stand on.

  3. Place the bread rounds in a well-buttered dish and set an apple on each.

  4. Fill the holes in the apples with butter and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until tender.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish, add a little apricot jam on top of each apple, and cover with sifted sugar.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Their firm flesh softens during baking and holds its shape while giving the dish its main body.
Butter
Fat that enriches the filling and helps the apple flesh turn tender and rich as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, as it melts, adds to the syrupy juices that collect around the apples.
Bread
Rounds act as a base under each apple, soaking up buttery juices as the dish bakes.
Apricot jam
Adds fruity sweetness and a glossy finish when spooned over the hot apples.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Baking low and slow lets the apple's starch and cell walls soften evenly without the flesh collapsing. Checking for tenderness with a knife prevents underbaked centres or apples that turn to mush.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Pearfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, butter, 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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