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Crab-apple Jelly

A jelly made from crab-apples, water, and sugar.

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-apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and quarter the crab-apples, removing the cores and placing them in a separate dish.

  2. Fill a large bowl halfway with water and drop the pieces of fruit into it.

  3. Chop the parings and imperfect parts finely and place them in a preserving kettle.

Extract the juice

  1. Add 1 quart of water for every 2 quarts of fruit and parings, then cook gently for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and finish as you would with apple jelly.

  3. Cook the cores in a separate kettle covered with water for 2 hours.

  4. After straining the first mixture, combine the remaining parts with the cooked cores and strain again to extract more juice.

Make the jelly

  1. In the preserving kettle, mix the juice with 1 pint of sugar for every pint of juice and boil for 10 minutes.

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, pectin and tart flavour that give the jelly its body and taste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with boiling, helps the juice thicken and set into jelly.
Water
Draws juice out of the fruit during gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. The mixture must reach a full set point to gel. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can darken its colour and flavour.

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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