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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dessert with sugar, cinnamon or nutmeg, lemon juice, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wipe and core the apples, scoring them faintly with a sharp knife.

  3. Fill the cavities with sugar and a drop of lemon juice.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Slightly cover the bottom of a baking dish with boiling water.

  2. Bake the apples until soft, basting often with the syrup in the dish.

  3. Serve hot or cold with 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sour apples
Their tart flavour balances the sweet sugar and their flesh softens into a tender filling when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and dissolves into a syrup in the dish that glazes them as they bake.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Basting the apples until soft. Basting spoons the sugary syrup back over the apples so the surfaces stay moist and glossy. Baking until the flesh is soft shows the apples are cooked through, since the thick skin and dense flesh hide doneness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, 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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