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Dessert

Apples, Baked

Baked apples with optional egg white, sugar, jam, butter, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and blackberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apples, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Peel and core the apples, keeping them whole.

  3. Roll up the apple peel tightly and place it in the center of each apple.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the apples with egg white.

  2. Let the egg white dry.

  3. Re-coat the apples with egg white.

  4. Sprinkle the apples with castor sugar.

  5. Place the apples in a pie dish.

  6. Cover the dish with greased paper.

  7. Bake until tender, about 1 hour.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove the apple peel.

  2. Fill the cavity with your choice of jam or jelly.

  3. Optionally add a small piece of butter.

  4. Optionally add some brown sugar.

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 + blackberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Blackberry + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften as they bake, becoming tender while holding their shape.
Egg white
Forms a thin glossy coating that dries and helps the sugar stick.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the surface and helps it brown as it bakes.
Jam or jelly
Sweetens the cavity and adds fruit flavour as it warms.

The step that matters

Let the egg white dry before re-coating. The first thin coat must dry into a film before the second is added. If the apples are re-coated while wet, the egg white slides off and the sugar does not hold to the surface.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, blackberry, butter. 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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