<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/dining/03APPL.html?ex=1385787600&en=44ef6beba6bbf308&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND">In Search of the Perfect Baked Apple</a>: “In the long history of baked apples (which, one would assume, dates back as far as fire and apples), plain cooked fruit without a sweetener was not always considered the food of abstinence. Stuffed with sausage or mincemeat, as was popular in the 18th century, apples could be decadently savory.
“If you start with an intense, spicy apple, baking concentrates the flavor and adds a caramel nuance to the juice. In the ‘Original Boston Cooking School Cookbook’ (1896 edition), Fannie Farmer directs her readers to bake naked apples in autumn, when the fruit is at its best. In late winter, after the apples have been stored for several months, she advised a thick dusting of powdered ginger, mace and sugar along with some rose water.
“Dorothy Hartley gives this advice for roast apples, prepared without sugar, in her seminal ‘Food in England’ (1954, Macdonald): ‘When the cores are left in, the pips give a pleasant aroma to the fruit, so well-flavored apples should be roasted whole. Later in the year the core may be withdrawn with a scoop.’”
No fixed plans. Not intent upon arriving.