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Dessert

Baked Apples

Baked apples topped with a cream, sugar, flour, and nutmeg or lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Select tart apples, pare, cut into halves, and remove the cores.

  2. Bake the apples until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, stir together the cream, sugar, flour, and nutmeg or lemon.

  2. Cook the syrup for a short time.

Serve

  1. Pour the syrup over the baked apples.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the main body and tart flavor that the sweet syrup balances.
Thin cream
Adds richness and moisture to the syrup, giving it a smooth, pourable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the syrup and helps it caramelize lightly when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the syrup clings to the apples.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup for a short time. Flour must be heated long enough to cook out its raw taste and thicken the cream. Overcooking may cause the cream to curdle or separate, so the syrup should be watched closely.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour, nutmeg. 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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