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Dessert

Black Caps

A baked apple dish with sugar, wine, lemon, cloves, and raisin wine sauce.

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 the apples

  1. Halve and core the apples, then place them in a shallow pan.

  2. Sprinkle white sugar over the apples and bake them.

  3. For another method, slice off the stalk end of the apples and core them without peeling.

  4. Mix sugar with grated lemon and powdered cloves, then stuff the mixture into the apple holes.

Bake and serve

  1. In a saucepan, boil the wine and water, then sweeten for sauce.

  2. Place the apples flat side down in a stew pan with raisin wine and water.

  3. Cover and cook on low heat, basting occasionally with the liquid.

  4. 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

Large apples
Provide the fruit that softens and holds its shape while baking.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples brown and caramelise on the surface.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the cooking liquid and sauce.
Raisin wine
Supplies sweetness and fruity flavour to the liquid that cooks the apples.
Grated lemon
Adds bright aroma and acidity to the sugar stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting on low heat. Cooking covered on low heat with regular basting keeps the apples moist and lets them soften evenly without splitting or drying out. Too much heat can break down the flesh before the centres are tender.

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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