Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Glace Baked Apples
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
Select rosy-cheeked Baldwin apples with long stems and wipe them carefully.
Make a cut ½ inch deep around each apple, halfway between the stem and blossom ends.
Bake and serve
Place the apples in an earthen dish with 2 cups of water and sprinkle lightly with sugar.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the pulp puffs out from the crack.
Transfer the apples to a glass dish and pour over the syrup made from the cooking water and sugar.
Let cool so that the liquid will candy on the apples.
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.
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Baldwin apples
- Their firm pulp softens and puffs out through the cut as they bake.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and, dissolved in the cooking liquid, forms the syrup that candies as it cools.
- Water
- Forms the cooking liquid that turns into a syrup around the apples.
The step that matters
Bake until the pulp puffs out from the crack. Baking in a hot oven softens the flesh and pushes it through the cut. Pulling the apples too early leaves them firm, while overbaking can collapse them into mush.
“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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