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Crab-Apple Pickle

A pickle made from crab apples, brown sugar, vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Crab-Apple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put 1 clove into each apple.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine brown sugar and vinegar to create a syrup.

Cook and cool

  1. Boil the crab apples slowly, one layer at a time, until they are clear.

  2. Leave the apples in the syrup to cool.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and translucent as it simmers in the syrup.
Brown sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the crab apples slowly, one layer at a time. Boiling too hard or crowding the pot can break the skins and split the fruit. Cooking in layers keeps the apples whole while the sugar syrup slowly penetrates them.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Quincefits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon. 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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