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Dessert

Baked Apples with Figs

A baked apple dish filled with figs, sweetened with sugar and cinnamon, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 238 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Figs

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare the apples and remove the core.

  3. Fill the core space with one large fig or two small figs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a deep pan and add a little water.

  2. Sprinkle generously with sugar and a little cinnamon.

  3. Bake until the apples are done.

  4. Lift out carefully to avoid breaking.

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 + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

Firm apples
Hold their shape while softening, forming the tender body of the dish.
Figs
Add sweetness and a soft, jammy texture to the filled core.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps create light caramelization on the surface.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor that complements the apples and figs.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are done. Firm apples soften gradually as their starches and cell walls break down in heat. Underbaked apples stay hard in the center, while overbaked ones collapse and split, so check tenderness with a knife.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, cinnamon. 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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