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Dessert

Black Caps

Baked apples with sugar, wine, water, lemon, and cloves, served as a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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

  2. Sprinkle white sugar over the apples.

  3. Bake the apples.

  4. Mix wine and water in a separate bowl.

  5. Sweeten the mixture for sauce.

Stuff and simmer

  1. Slice off the stalk end of the apples.

  2. Core the apples without peeling.

  3. Mix sugar, grated lemon, and powdered cloves.

  4. Fill the holes in the apples with the mixture.

  5. Place the apples flat end down in a saucepan with half wine and half water.

  6. Cover the saucepan and cook on low heat.

  7. Baste the apples occasionally with the liquid.

Finish

  1. Blacken the tops of the apples 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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the body of the dish and soften into the sauce as they cook.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple surfaces brown.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Cloves
Add warm, spicy aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cover the saucepan and cook on low heat. Low, covered heat lets the apples soften gently in the liquid. Too much heat can scorch the liquid or break the apples down unevenly, so basting helps keep them moist.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, wine, 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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