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Dessert

Baked Apples with Sauce

A baked apple dessert with a butter, egg, sugar, milk sauce flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Apples with Sauce

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. Peel and core the cooking apples, then place them in a baking dish.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the butter, eggs, and sugar. Add the milk or cream and flavor with nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Set the baking dish in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. When the apples are nearly done, pour the sauce over them and finish baking.

  3. Serve 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor into the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set, giving it a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Pour the sauce over the apples near the end of baking. Egg-based sauces set from the heat around them and can curdle or overcook if baked too long. Adding the sauce when the apples are nearly done lets it set gently and stay smooth.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, milk, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, milk, 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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