Name: Baked Apples
Ingredients: 1 large apple; Karo syrup

Why it works: Apple and syrup work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 742 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Apples

Ingredients

1 large apple
Karo syrup

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Core the apple and place it in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

Pour Karo syrup over the apple.
Bake for 30 minutes or until tender.
Serve warm.

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.

Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together742 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple: Forms the tender body of the dish as it softens during baking.
Karo syrup: Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the apple glaze and soften as it bakes.

“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.