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Black Caps

A baked apple dish with a sweet lemon‑cinnamon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Pound together a few cloves, loaf sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  4. Fill the core space of each apple half with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed apple halves in a baking dish, cut side down.

  2. Add water that has been boiled with cinnamon and sugar.

  3. Bake in the oven until tender, being careful not to overbake.

  4. Let cool and serve with their own liquid.

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

Apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, juicy base when baked.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a syrupy liquid with the baking water.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stuffing.
Grated lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oil that lifts the sweetness of the filling.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid that the apples absorb.

The step that matters

Avoid overbaking. Apples keep softening after they are tender, and overbaking can collapse their flesh into mush and drive off the cooking liquid, so check them as they approach tenderness.

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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