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Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

A baked apple dessert with lemon rind, candied orange peel, brown sugar, sweet wine, and white sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Caps Par Excellence

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Cut the biffins in half without peeling them and scoop out the cores.

  2. Fill the cavities with thin strips of lemon rind and candied orange peel.

  3. Press the two halves of each apple together and place them closely in the tin.

Assemble in the tin

  1. Cover the bottom of a flat shallow tin with a thick layer of brown sugar.

  2. Pour half a bottle of sweet wine over the apples, ensuring the tops are moistened.

  3. Sift white sugar thickly on top of the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until the outsides catch or become black.

  2. Then reduce the heat and bake gently until the apples are soft throughout.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Norfolk biffins
Whole apple halves hold their shape while softening and provide the dessert's base.
Pale brown sugar
Forms a sweet syrup with the wine that caramelises and coats the apples.
Sweet wine
Moistens the apples and mixes with the sugar to form a syrup during baking.
Candied orange peel
Adds sweetness and a concentrated citrus aroma inside the apple cavities.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Bake in two stages. The very hot start browns and chars the outsides, building flavour, while the gentle second stage lets the heat reach the centres so the apples soften through without collapsing or burning.

“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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