Name: Stuffed Baked Apples
Ingredients: 8 large firm apples; ½ cup chopped blanched almonds; 2 cups light brown sugar; ½ cup stale cake crumbs or vanilla wafers; 4 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon nutmeg; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; 1 cup water

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stuffed Baked Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Make a syrup by combining 1 cup of water and 1 cup of brown sugar in a saucepan.
Pour the syrup into a baking dish.
Wash, dry, and core the apples, then set them upright in the syrup.

Fill and bake

Mix the almonds, remaining 1 cup of sugar, and cake or vanilla wafer crumbs, then pack this mixture into the cavities of the apples, heaping it on top.
Dot the apples with butter and sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over them.
Bake until the apples are tender.

Serve

Serve the apples warm on sauce dishes, dividing the syrup in the pan equally among them.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,514 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,287 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,961 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

Apples: Hold their shape as a tender case that softens and absorbs the syrup while baking.
Brown sugar: Sweetens the dish and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that cooks the apples.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the filling brown lightly.
Almonds: Add a nutty crunch and body to the filling.
Cake crumbs or vanilla wafers: Bind the filling and soak up juices, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar, vanilla, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon):

Figfits better
Blueberryfits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, vanilla, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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.