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Dessert

Baked Apples

Baked apples with sugar, butter, nutmeg, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Cut a slice from the top and bottom of each apple and core them without peeling.

  2. Place the apples in a pan and fill the core holes with sugar.

  3. Top each apple with nutmeg and butter.

  4. Use a bright pan or dish and cover with greased paper to prevent blistering.

Bake and serve

  1. Add water to the pan and bake, basting frequently with the syrup until done.

  2. Let the syrup thicken to the consistency of jelly.

  3. Serve the apples with the syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 soft, tender flesh that bakes down around the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, dissolving into the juices, helps form the thick syrup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the syrup turn glossy.
Water
Creates the liquid in the pan that becomes the syrup for basting.

The step that matters

Covering the pan with greased paper. Without a cover, the skins can blister in the oven's dry heat. Greased paper shields the surface while still letting steam escape.

Swap the apple

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

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

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