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Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

A baked apple dish with candied peel, brown sugar, and sweet wine.

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 (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the biffins in half without peeling them and scoop out the cores.

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

  3. Cover the bottom of a flat shallow tin with a thick layer of brown sugar.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sweet wine over the apples, ensuring the tops are moistened.

  2. Sift white sugar thickly over the apples.

  3. Bake in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the outsides catch or become black.

  4. 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 and soften evenly through long gentle baking.
Brown sugar
Melts into a syrup that caramelises against the apples and sweetens the dish.
Sweet wine
Adds moisture and sweetness, and its sugars help the tops darken as they bake.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated sweetness and citrus aroma inside the apple cavities.
Lemon rind
Adds bright acidity and aromatic oils that cut through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake in a very hot oven until the outsides catch. Dark caramelised surfaces develop from sugars browning at high heat, but if the apples are left too long they can burn before the flesh softens. The gentle second stage 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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