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Dessert

Spiced Apples

Baked apples spiced with cloves, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the apples in half without peeling and remove the core.

  3. Stick three cloves into each apple half.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a greased baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and grated nutmeg over the apples.

  3. Add dots of butter and a little water.

  4. Bake for about 30 minutes and serve in the baking dish.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and tart-sweet flavour, softening into a tender fruit as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cut surfaces brown and caramelise in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts into the apples, carrying flavour and keeping them moist.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the apple flesh as it bakes.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Judge the bake time. Apples soften as their cell walls and pectin break down in heat. Baked too long, they collapse into mush, so check that they are tender but still hold their shape.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sugar, nutmeg, 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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