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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish with currants, powdered sugar, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel the apples and slice them lengthwise or cut them in half.

  3. Fill the cavities of the apples with currants and powdered sugar.

  4. Pour a little melted butter over each apple.

Bake

  1. Place the apples in a buttered paper bag and close it securely.

  2. Put the bag on a wire rack and bake for 20 minutes.

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 + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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
Soften when baked and provide the main body and tart-sweet flavour of the dish.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy texture inside the apple cavities.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the apple juices and adds sweetness and gentle caramelisation.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the apple surfaces brown lightly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter. 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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