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Dessert

Spiced Crab Apples

Preserved crab apples in a spiced vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spiced Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Choose round crab apples uniform in size; do not peel them.

  2. Make a spiced syrup by boiling vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice together.

Soak and pack

  1. Add crab apples to the syrup and heat gently, being careful not to burst the fruit.

  2. Let the apples stand in the syrup overnight.

  3. Pack the apples cold, cover with syrup, seal, and process pint jars for fifteen minutes at 180°F (82°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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 body and tartness that the spiced syrup penetrates and flavors.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by binding water.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup that the fruit absorbs.
Cloves
Contribute strong aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heat the apples gently in the syrup. Rapid boiling makes the skins split and the flesh collapse. Gentle heat lets the syrup soften the fruit and enter it while the apples keep their shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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