Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓
Apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Quarter the codlings and place them in a preserving pan with the lemon peel, cinnamon, and cloves.
Add enough spring water to just cover the codlings and boil until they become a pulp.
Make the jelly
Strain the mixture through a jelly bag to extract the juice.
For every pint of juice, add ¾ pound of sugar and boil rapidly until it jellies.
Pour the jelly into pots or molds to set.
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.
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Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,189 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,950 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,150 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cinnamon and sugar 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
- Codlings
- Provide the pectin and apple flavor that give the jelly its body and set.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set when boiled with the juice.
The step that matters
Boil rapidly until it jellies. Boiling the sugar and juice hard concentrates the solution until it reaches the gel point. Underboiling leaves it runny, while overboiling can make it stiff or dull in colour.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Quincefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, 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.
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