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Dessert

Baked Apples

A simple oven-baked apple dish with sugar, cloves, cinnamon, butter, and a honey or sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel and core the apples.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the cavities of the apples with sugar, one clove, a pinch of cinnamon, and a bit of butter.

  2. Pour a syrup made of hot water and honey or sugar around the apples.

  3. Bake the apples carefully until tender.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Apple + honeytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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 that softens into a tender, spoonable fruit when baked.
Butter
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the filling a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apple flesh caramelize slightly at the edges.
Honey or sugar
Sweetens the syrup that bathes the apples and adds moisture during baking.

The step that matters

Bake the apples carefully until tender. Baking at 350°F softens the fruit's cell walls gradually. Too high a heat or too long a bake can split the skins and collapse the apples, while underbaking leaves the flesh firm and starchy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, butter, honey. 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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