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Dessert

Black Caps Par Excklence

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

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 Excklence

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 apples in half without peeling them and scoop out the cores.

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

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

Add the sugar and wine

  1. Cover the bottom of a flat 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. Reduce heat and bake gently until 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

Norfolk biffins (or other firm apples)
Firm flesh holds its shape during long baking while the interior softens.
Fine pale brown sugar
Forms a syrup with the wine and juices, adding sweetness and caramel flavour.
Sweet wine
Moistens the apples and mixes with the sugar to create the syrup in the tin.
White sugar
Sifted on top, it sweetens the surface and helps the outsides darken as they bake.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated sweet citrus aroma inside the cored apples.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat before the apples burn. A very hot oven blackens the outsides quickly, but if heat stays high the sugar can scorch before the centre softens. Dropping to a gentle heat lets the interior cook through evenly.

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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