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Dessert

Baked Apples

Apples baked with sugar, cinnamon or nutmeg, lemon, and water, served hot or cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wipe and core the apples.

  2. Place them in a baking dish and fill the cavities with sugar and spice.

  3. If using nutmeg, add lemon juice and lemon rind to each apple.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of the dish with boiling water.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until soft, basting often with the syrup in the dish.

  3. Serve hot or cold with cream.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

Sour apples
Provide the fruit that softens into the dish, with tartness that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once dissolved, forms the syrup that glazes the apples while baking.
Cinnamon or nutmeg
Adds warm aroma to the apples as they bake.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and the flavour of the apples.

The step that matters

Bake until soft, basting often. Apples must cook long enough for the flesh to soften fully throughout. Basting with the pan syrup keeps the surface moist and helps it turn glossy rather than drying out in the oven heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, 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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