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Dessert

Meringued Apples

A baked apple dish topped with meringue and sweetmeats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Meringued Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and stew the apples.

  2. Line a dish with sponge cake or bread soaked in milk or cream.

Assemble and custard

  1. Place the apples in the dish, filling the cores with sweetmeats.

  2. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks with the cream and nutmeg.

  3. Pour the mixture over the apples.

Meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding sugar until it is as stiff as icing.

  2. Pour the egg white mixture over the apples.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  4. Serve with sauce.

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

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

  2. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while beaten whites form the meringue topping.
Apples
Provide the fruit base that softens during stewing and baking.
Sponge cake or bread
Soaks up the milk or cream to form a soft, absorbent base layer.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the custard layer.
Sugar
Stiffens the egg whites and sweetens the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be beaten until stiff and glossy with sugar added gradually, so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a light, stable topping. Under-beaten whites collapse and weep.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, coffee, cream, nutmeg, sugar. 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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