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Dessert

Apples, Baked

A simple oven-baked apple dish with optional wine, sugar, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apples, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Wash the apples and place them in a clean baking tin.

  3. Add a little water to the tin to prevent burning.

Bake

  1. Bake until the skins look shriveled, about 30-60 minutes depending on the type of apples.

  2. Add homemade wine and sugar towards the end of baking for a syrup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

  2. Optionally remove the skins and roll the apples in powdered sugar.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Wine + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften as they bake, becoming tender and sweeter, and form the main body of the dish.
Water
Creates moisture in the tin, helping prevent the apples and pan from scorching.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the wine, helps form a syrup as the apples bake.
Homemade wine
Adds flavour and liquid that combines with sugar into a syrup during baking.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by the skins. Apple types differ in density and moisture, so baking time varies widely. Shrivelled skins signal that the flesh has softened, so checking the apples rather than the clock prevents underbaking or overbaking.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, wine, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, wine, ginger. 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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