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Dessert

Apple Black Caps

Stewed apples with sugar, wine, cloves, lemon rind, then blackened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Black Caps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare the apples and remove the cores without breaking them.

  3. Fill each apple with pounded sugar and 1-2 cloves.

Stew and blacken

  1. Place the apples in a shallow dish with sweet wine, sugar to taste, lemon rind, and any additional flavoring.

  2. Stew the apples slowly in the oven until soft but not broken, about 30 minutes.

  3. Use a salamander to heat the tops of the apples until they look black.

  4. Serve hot or cold.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Hold their shape while softening, giving the dish its body and structure.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apple flesh soften and taste rich.
Sweet wine
Adds liquid for slow stewing and contributes sweetness and aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the filling.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until soft but not broken. Gentle, low oven heat softens the apple flesh evenly while the skin and shape hold. Higher heat or overcooking causes the apples to split and collapse into a mush.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, clove, wine. 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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