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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish with nuts, sugar, and water, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples.

  3. Fill the cores with chopped nuts and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Add ½ to 1 cup of water to the baking dish.

  2. Bake the apples until tender and serve with whipped 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. 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. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Apple + nutstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Provide the main body that softens into a tender, spoonable filling when baked.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft apple.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple surfaces caramelise lightly as they bake.
Water
Creates steam in the dish so the apples cook through gently without drying out.

The step that matters

Bake the apples until tender. Baking is finished by tenderness, not by time alone, because apple varieties and sizes vary. Underbaked apples stay firm and starchy, while overbaked ones collapse. Checking with a knife tip shows when the flesh is evenly soft.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, 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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