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Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

A baked apple dish with lemon rind, candied orange peel, brown sugar, sweet wine, and a 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 shallow tin with a thick layer of brown sugar.

  2. Pour the 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 are blackened.

  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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Biffins (firm apples)
Hold their shape under long baking while the flesh turns soft and tender.
Pale brown sugar
Sweetens the dish and caramelises into a syrup that glazes the apples.
Sweet wine
Moistens the apples and forms a sweet, fragrant syrup in the tin.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated citrus sweetness and aroma inside the cavities.

The step that matters

Bake in a very hot oven until the outsides are blackened. Sugar on the surface caramelises and darkens quickly at high heat. Leaving the apples too long at this stage can burn the sugar before the interior softens, so the heat must be reduced once the surface browns.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Blackberryfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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