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Dessert

Black Caps

A baked apple dish stuffed with cloves, sugar, lemon peel, and simmered in cinnamon water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Caps

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the apples in half and remove the cores without peeling them.

  2. Pound together cloves, loaf sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the hollowed-out space of each apple half.

  4. Place the stuffed halves in a baking dish with the flat side down.

Bake and serve

  1. Boil water with cinnamon and sugar, then pour it over the apples.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done, being careful not to overbake.

  3. Let cool before serving.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Finest baking or boiling apples
Provide the main body and tart flavor that the filling and syrup surround.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps caramelize the surface of the apples as they bake.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the stuffing.
Grated lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oil that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavor to the sweet syrup poured over the apples.

The step that matters

Avoid overbaking. Apples cooked too long lose their shape and turn mushy as their cell walls break down under prolonged heat. Baking only until tender keeps the halves intact while the sugar and spices remain flavorful.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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