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Dessert

Baked Apples

A baked apple dish with sugar, butter, cinnamon or nutmeg, and optional lemon, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

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 the apples

  1. Wash, wipe, and core the apples.

  2. Place them in a granite or earthen dish.

  3. Fill the cavities with sugar, butter, and cinnamon or nutmeg.

  4. If using nutmeg, add a slight grating of lemon rind and a few drops of lemon juice to each apple.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of the dish with boiling water to a depth of ½ inch.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the apples are soft, basting often with the syrup in the pan.

  3. Serve hot or cold, with or without 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.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Tart apples
Hold their shape while softening, and provide the fruit flavor and tartness that balance the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with the juices, forms the syrup that glazes the apples as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts into the cavities and syrup.

The step that matters

Basting the apples with the syrup. Basting often moistens the apple flesh and keeps the sugary syrup from drying or scorching, so the apples soften evenly and glaze well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, 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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with Wine 10with Cream 7with Butter 5with Meringue 5with Rice 5with Syrup 5 See all 248 →

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