Skip to main content
Dessert

Jellied Apples

A dessert of boiled apples set in a gelatinous sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jellied Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water for 2 hours.

  2. Combine sugar, lemon juice, and the remaining water in a pot.

  3. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes.

Cook the apples

  1. Add apples to the pot.

  2. Cook gently until tender enough to pierce with a straw.

  3. Remove apples with a skimmer and place on a platter.

  4. Repeat with remaining apples.

  5. After cooking all apples, remove the pot from heat.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in the dissolved gelatine.

  2. Place the pot in a basin of ice water. Stir until cool.

  3. Add the apples to the gelatine mixture. Mix well.

  4. Pour into a mold.

  5. Set in a cool place to harden.

  6. Serve with whipped cream or soft custard.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Tart apples
Provide the fruit body and flavor that the jelly sets around and holds in place.
Gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly that holds the apples when cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved gelatine off the heat and cool before adding apples. Gelatine loses its setting power if boiled and must be cooled to a syrupy state so it thickens evenly. Adding apples too early can leave them floating or breaking apart, so cooling the mixture first keeps the fruit suspended and the jelly uniform.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes