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Dessert

Cinnamon Apples

Apples simmered in a cinnamon-sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cinnamon Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar to a boil to make the syrup.

Stuff and cook the apples

  1. Stuff the peeled and cored apples with bananas or ginger.

  2. Once the syrup is boiling, add the stuffed apples and 2-3 drops of candy cinnamon.

  3. Sprinkle the remaining candy cinnamon over the apples.

Serve

  1. Serve the apples cold in a crystal dish alongside a meat course.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Apples
Form the main fruit base that softens and takes on the syrup and cinnamon flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens and dissolves into the syrup that the apples cook and soak in.
Candy cinnamon drops
Add cinnamon aroma and flavour to the apples and syrup.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bananathe original

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