Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

A baked apple dessert with lemon rind, candied orange peel, wine, and sugar, baked until blackened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Cut the biffins in half and scoop out the cores.

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

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

Assemble in the tin

  1. Cover the bottom of a shallow tin with a thick layer of pale brown sugar.

  2. Pour the wine over the apples, ensuring the tops are moistened.

  3. Sift white sugar thickly over the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until the outsides are blackened.

  2. 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. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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 through long baking while the outside blackens.
Pale brown sugar
Melts into a syrup with the wine and caramelises on the surface, adding sweetness and colour.
Raisin or other sweet wine
Moistens the apples and mingles with the sugar to form a syrup that keeps them juicy.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated sweet, aromatic citrus flavour inside the cored apples.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oil that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Blackening in the very hot oven. Sugars caramelise and darken at high heat, so the outsides need a very hot oven to blacken. Reducing the heat afterwards lets the interior soften without burning the sugar coating.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Cranberryfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes