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Dessert

Glazed Baked Apples

Apples baked with sugar and water until crisp, then basted with cooking water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Glazed Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the apples and remove the cores and skin from the top of each apple, about halfway down.

  2. Place the apples close together in a saucepan, peeled side up.

Cook

  1. Add boiling water, cover, and cook slowly until easily pierced with a skewer.

  2. Transfer the apples to a baking dish, peeled side up.

Glaze and bake

  1. Sprinkle with sugar and place in a very hot oven (425°F / 220°C).

  2. Baste frequently with the cooking water until the sugar dissolves and the tops are crisp.

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

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

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

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

  3. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

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

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
Provide the main body of the dessert, softening into a tender, spoonable flesh when cooked.
Sugar
Dissolves into the cooking liquid and caramelizes on the surface, adding sweetness and a crisp glaze.
Boiling water
Creates steam for gentle cooking and forms the basting liquid that carries sugar over the apples.

The step that matters

Basting until the tops are crisp. Sugar dissolves into the cooking water, and as the liquid evaporates the syrup thickens and caramelizes at high heat. Frequent basting keeps the surface glossy and helps it brown evenly without burning.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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