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Dessert

Apples, Frosted

A dessert of apples simmered, peeled, buttered, sugared, and baked until sparkling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apples, Frosted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Simmer the apples gently in a pan of cold water with alum and vine leaves until the skins can be easily pulled off.

  2. Remove the skins from the apples.

Coat and bake

  1. Dip each apple in clarified butter.

  2. Strew the apples with crushed white sugar.

  3. Bake the sugared apples in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the sugar sparkles.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, place the apples on a glass dish, piling them high.

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 during simmering and provide the body of the dessert.
Clarified butter
Gives the sugar a surface to cling to and helps it brown and crisp in the oven.
Crushed white sugar
Forms the sparkling frosted coating as it melts and dries in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until the sugar sparkles. Sugar melts and then recrystallises into a glassy layer only at a gentle, steady heat. Too hot and it darkens and turns bitter before the apples are set.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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