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Dessert

Scalloped Apples

A baked apple dish with sugar, spices, and buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scalloped Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the dish

  1. In a buttered baking dish, layer half of the chopped apples.

  2. Sprinkle half of the buttered crumbs over the apples.

  3. Add the remaining apples in another layer.

  4. Sprinkle the remaining crumbs on top.

  5. Mix the sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then sprinkle over the apples.

  6. Pour the water over the top layer of crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake until the apples are tender and the top is golden.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender filling as they bake.
Buttered crumbs
Form the layers between the apples and brown on top, adding a golden crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps draw out juices that form a syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apples and helps them keep their shape.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour that pairs with the apples.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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