Name: Baked Apples
Ingredients: Good baking apples (1 for each person plus 1 or 2 extra); White sugar

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Good baking apples (1 for each person plus 1 or 2 extra)
White sugar

Directions

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

Prepare

Wipe the apples thoroughly without peeling them.
Place the apples side by side in a shallow earthenware dish, ensuring they do not touch each other.

Bake and serve

Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked throughout.
Remove from the oven and let them cool on a dish.
Before serving, sift white sugar thickly over the apples.

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.

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

Baking apples: Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender flesh when baked slowly.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and a sugary coating on the cooled apples.

“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.