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Pickled Crab Apples

Pickled crab apples are small crab apples preserved in a vinegar and brown sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickled Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pierce the apples with a fork and steam them.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, brown sugar, and mixed spices to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup for 10 minutes.

Pickle

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the steamed apples in a jar.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  5. 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 that is steamed and then soaked in the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the apples and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar, and helps thicken the syrup.
Mixed spices
Add aroma and warm flavor that the syrup carries into the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup for 10 minutes. Boiling dissolves the brown sugar fully and blends the vinegar and spices into a uniform syrup. Pouring hot syrup over the apples helps them take up flavor and stay evenly preserved.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Applethe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, vinegar, 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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