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Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

A baked apple dish with wine, lemon rind, candied orange peel, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the biffins in half and remove the cores.

  3. Fill the cavities with strips of lemon rind and candied orange peel.

Assemble

  1. Cover the bottom of a shallow baking dish with a thick layer of brown sugar.

  2. Press the apple halves together and place them closely in the dish.

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

  4. Sprinkle brown sugar thickly on top of the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake in the hot oven until the outsides are blackened, then 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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + orangetop 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 or other firm apples
Firm flesh holds its shape during long baking while the interior softens.
Fine pale brown sugar
Melts into a syrup and caramelises on the surface, adding sweetness and browning.
Sweet wine
Moistens the apples and mingles with the sugar to form a syrupy sauce.

The step that matters

Bake in two stages. A hot start blackens the outside and builds colour, while the gentler second bake lets the centre soften without the surface burning or drying out.

Swap the apple

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

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

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