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Dessert

Baked Apples and Nuts

A baked apple dessert filled with a nut and sugar mixture, topped with whipped cream or meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Apples and Nuts

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Core the apples and peel them.

  3. Chop the nut meats finely and mix with sugar.

  4. Fill the centers of the apples with the nut and sugar mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a deep pan and add boiling water.

  2. Bake until tender, turning the apples halfway through to prevent browning.

  3. Carefully remove the apples from the pan and place them in a serving dish.

  4. Pour the juice over the apples and top with whipped cream or meringue.

  5. Garnish each apple with a cherry.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Apple + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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
Hold their shape as they soften and provide the main body of the dessert.
Nut meats
Add crunch and rich flavor to the filling against the soft apple.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelize and brown during baking.
Egg whites
Form the meringue topping, adding light, airy texture to the finished dessert.

The step that matters

Turning the apples halfway through baking. Turning helps the apples cook evenly and brown uniformly, since the side touching the pan heats faster and can darken or dry out before the rest is tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, 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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