Vintage Cookbook: Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six (1879).

Ingredients

1 quart of nice apples
sugar
cloves
yellow rind of a lemon or orange

Instructions

Pare the apples, core them without breaking, set them side by side in a baking dish that will just hold them, fill the centres with sugar, place two cloves in the top of each one, grate over them the yellow rind of a lemon or orange, and put them into a moderate oven only until they are tender; do not let them break apart. As soon as they are tender take them from the oven, heat a fire shovel red hot and hold it over them, near enough to blacken their tops. Serve either hot or cold.

A porcelain-lined baking dish, or a gratin pan, is the best dish for cooking the black-caps in, because either can be set upon a clean plate and sent to the table; if the apples have to be removed from the dish in which they were baked they may be broken, and then the appearance of the dish will be spoiled.

The flavor of the dish may be changed by varying the spice, and by occasionally using a little wine or brandy with the sugar. The cost of a dish large enough for half a dozen persons will be covered by ten cents, unless it is made when apples are scarce and dear.