Baked apples with cheese & honey (Roman-style idea)

Baked apples with cheese and honey

Origin: Roman Empire

From the journey of Apple.

Roman cuisine drew no clear line between sweet and savoury. The pairing of fruit with cheese and honey (combinations that strike modern palates as unusual) was entirely unremarkable at a Roman table, where the gustatio (first course) might include fruit, cheese, olives, and eggs all at once. The Romans inherited their apple orchards and culinary instincts from the Greeks and Persians before them, and by the 1st century CE their orchards were producing dozens of named apple varieties. Columella and Pliny both wrote approvingly of baked apples, and the combination of melting soft cheese, honey, and warm spiced fruit would have been a fitting close to a cena.

Ingredients

Main

  • 4 piece Golden Delicious or Braeburn apples (firm, not too tart)

Filling

  • 60 g hard aged cheese (mahon, aged manchego, or sharp cheddar), diced small
  • 0.33 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 4 tbsp light amber honey, plus more to drizzle
  • 2 tbsp balsamic glaze or aged balsamic vinegar
  • 0.5 tsp fleur de sel or flaky sea salt

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 195°C (380°F). Line a roasting pan or baking dish with foil.
  2. Score the apples lightly around their equator (a shallow cut through the skin all the way around) to prevent the skin from bursting during baking.
  3. Core each apple deeply, from the top down, leaving the bottom intact. The cavity should be about 3 cm wide and reach almost to the base.
  4. Fill each apple cavity halfway with the diced cheese. Add a pinch of cinnamon and a pinch of salt on top of the cheese. Drizzle in 1 tablespoon of honey and a few drops of balsamic glaze. Replace the apple tops if you removed them.
  5. Place the filled apples upright in the baking dish. Bake for 35–40 minutes until the apples are completely soft when pressed and the filling is bubbling and golden.
  6. Remove from the oven. Drizzle each apple with a little extra honey and balsamic glaze. Serve warm and gooey.

Notes

This dish works equally well as a starter, a cheese course substitute, or a light dessert: just as it would have at a Roman cena. For a more directly ancient flavour, add a pinch of cumin to the filling and use an aged pecorino in place of the cheddar.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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