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Dessert

To Make Black Caps

Baked apples with rose water and sugar, served with thick cream custard or white wine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Black Caps

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Cut off a slice at the blossom end of each apple.

  2. Place the apples in a tin and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

Glaze and finish

  1. Wet the apples with rose water and sprinkle with lump sugar.

  2. Return the apples to the oven until they look bright and black.

  3. Transfer the apples to a deep china dish or plate and pour thick cream custard or white wine sugar around them.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + rosetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Their flesh softens and their sugars caramelise on the surface as they bake, giving the dessert its body.
Lump sugar
Melts and caramelises on the hot apple surface, adding sweetness and a dark, glossy browning.
Rose water
Adds a delicate floral aroma to the apples.

The step that matters

Returning the apples to the oven until they look bright and black. Sugar caramelises quickly at high heat, so the apples can go from glossy to burnt within minutes. Checking them often keeps the sugar dark and glossy without bitterness.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rose, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, sugar, cream. 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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