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Dessert

Buttered Apples

Apples are stuffed with butter, stewed, then topped with apricot jam and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Buttered Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples without piercing them.

  2. Fill the cavities with butter.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, place the apples close together and stew gently, turning occasionally until almost tender.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the apples, shake well, and stew for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the apples on a hot dish, fill each with apricot jam, and pour the syrup from the pan around them.

  2. Serve immediately with or without whipped cream.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the apples as they stew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a syrup with the cooking juices.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the filled cavities.

The step that matters

Stewing until almost tender. Stewing gently and turning the apples keeps them intact and evenly cooked. High heat can break the skins and collapse the flesh before the centres soften.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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

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