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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple baked apple dessert with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked 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. Wash the apples.

  2. Place them whole in a baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the apples.

  4. Add water for sauce.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until soft.

Fill and finish

  1. Cut out the stem of each apple, leaving a cavity.

  2. Fill the cavity with sugar.

  3. Arrange the apples stem end up in the dish.

  4. Sprinkle more sugar on top.

  5. Add water.

  6. Squeeze lemon juice over the top layer.

  7. Place a slice of lemon on each apple.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, and their starch and pectin soften into a tender, spoonable flesh as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into a syrup that moistens the apples and browns slightly in the dish.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar and syrup.

The step that matters

Bake until soft. Apples need enough heat time for their cell walls and pectin to soften. Underbaked apples stay firm and starchy, while overbaking makes them collapse and turn mushy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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