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Crab Apples

A candied apple syrup made by boiling crab apples in sugar water until the syrup reaches 33 °C.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash the crab apples and place them in a kettle.

  2. Cover the apples with boiling water and simmer until the skin comes off easily.

  3. Drain the water and remove the peel.

  4. Using a small knife, cut out the core from the blossom end, leaving the stem intact.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate kettle, combine 50 pints of water and 125 pounds of sugar, and bring to a boil.

  2. Drop the prepared apples into the boiling syrup and cook slowly until the syrup reaches 33 °C.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  2. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 and the tart flavour that the finished syrup is built around.
Sugar
Dissolves in the boiling water to form the syrup and gives sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples in the boiling syrup. Cooking slowly lets the apples soften and flavour the syrup evenly, while the syrup thickens as water evaporates and sugar concentrates. Stopping at the stated temperature sets the right consistency.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, 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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