Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Caps Par Excellence

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

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

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

  2. Fill the cavities with thin strips of 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 half a bottle of 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 (400°F / 200°C) until the outsides are blackened.

  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

Norfolk biffins
Firm apples hold their shape while softening during long, gentle baking.
Brown sugar
Forms a thick syrup under the apples and caramelises on the cut surfaces, adding sweetness.
Sweet wine
Moistens the apple tops and mingles with the sugar to form a syrup for basting.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated sweetness and aromatic citrus flavour inside the cavities.

The step that matters

Bake in a very hot oven until the outsides are blackened, then reduce the heat. The high initial heat caramelises and darkens the sugar on the exposed surfaces. Gentle heat afterwards lets the interior soften fully without scorching the sugar.

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.

You might also like

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