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Dessert

Black Caps

A baked apple dessert cooked with wine, sugar, lemon, cloves, and raisin wine.

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 ↓

Black Caps

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake the apples

  1. Halve the apples and core them.

  2. Place the halved and cored apples in a shallow pan.

  3. Sprinkle white sugar over the apples.

  4. Bake the apples.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the wine and water.

  2. Sweeten the sauce.

Stuff and stew

  1. Slice off the stalk end of the apples.

  2. Core the apples without peeling.

  3. Mix sugar with grated lemon and powdered cloves.

  4. Stuff the mixture into the apple cores.

  5. Place the apples flat end down in a stewpan with half raisin wine and half water.

  6. Cover the stewpan.

  7. Cook on a very low heat.

  8. Baste occasionally with the liquid.

Finish

  1. When done, blacken the tops with a salamander.

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 + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the dessert, softening as they cook to a tender, juicy texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple surfaces brown and caramelize during baking.
Raisin wine
Adds fruity flavour and moisture to the liquid that cooks the apples in the stewpan.
Grated lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Cloves (powdered)
Add a warm, spiced aroma to the sugar and lemon filling.

The step that matters

Cook on a very low heat. A gentle heat lets the apples soften evenly through without breaking apart or scorching the sugar and liquid on the bottom of the stewpan.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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