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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish served with butter, bread, or optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the apples and remove the core.

  2. Place the apples in a baking tin, stem end down.

  3. Pour over some water and a little sugar if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until tender.

  2. Let cool and serve plain with butter and bread or with whipped or sterilized 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 of the dish, softening into a tender, sweet fruit as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple flesh caramelize lightly in the baking tin.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor when served with the baked apples.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Apples need enough time in the oven for starch and cell walls to soften fully. Underbaked apples stay firm and grainy, while overbaking can cause them to collapse.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread, 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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with Wine 10with Cream 7with Butter 5with Meringue 5with Rice 5with Syrup 5 See all 248 →

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