Skip to main content
Dessert

Siberian Crab Jelly

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Siberian Crab Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place crab apples in a preserving kettle and cover with water.

  2. Boil until soft, then pour into a jelly bag and let drip.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure equal weights of crab apple juice and sugar.

  2. Slice the lemons and add them to the mixture.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove lemon slices before finishing.

  5. If desired, strain the jelly again for clarity.

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. Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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

Crab apples
Provide the natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.
Lemons
Add acidity that supports pectin setting and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes. Boiling the juice and sugar mixture for the stated time concentrates sugar and activates pectin. Too short a boil can leave the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it dull or sticky.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, lemon. 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.

More crab apple jelly recipes

and Jam 3 See all 92 →

You might also like

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