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Dessert

Scalloped Apples

A baked apple dish layered with buttered bread crumbs and sweetened apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Scalloped 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 crumbs

  1. Cut the loaf in half and remove the soft part.

  2. Crumb the bread by rubbing it through a colander.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it lightly with the crumbs using a fork.

Layer and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a buttered pudding dish with half of the crumbs.

  2. Spread half of the sliced apples over the crumbs and sprinkle with half of the sugar, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Repeat the layers, finishing with the remaining crumbs.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes, covering initially to prevent browning.

  5. Serve with sugar and 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the crumb layers that soak up apple juices and hold the structure of the dish.
Butter
Coats the crumbs so they brown and taste rich rather than drying out.
Apples
Provide the moist, tender fruit layer that softens during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps the top brown as the dish bakes.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Covering the dish at the start of baking. Covering the dish early traps moisture and slows surface browning, so the apples cook through before the crumb top darkens too much.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon. 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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