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Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wipe the apples and remove the core.

  2. Place the apples in a baking dish.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1 tablespoon of water into each apple.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, turning often for even cooking.

  2. Once done, carefully place on a dish and pour a little juice into each apple.

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 + 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
Their flesh softens as it heats, becoming tender and releasing juices that form a light syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the juices caramelise slightly at the edges of the cavity.

The step that matters

Turning the apples while they bake. Heat reaches the outside of the apples before the centre, so turning them often helps the flesh cook evenly and avoids a firm core beside overcooked edges.

“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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