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 ↓
Apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Cut and core the apples without peeling them.
Place the apples in a porcelain preserving kettle and cover with water.
Cook slowly until the apples look red.
Extract the juice
Pour the mixture into a colander to drain off the juice.
Let the juice run through a jelly bag, then return it to the cleaned kettle.
Make the jelly
Boil the juice for half an hour.
Measure the juice and add ½ pound of sugar for every pint of juice.
Boil quickly for fifteen minutes.
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.
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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, highly flavored apples
- Supply pectin and acid, which help the juice thicken and set into jelly.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep its shape.
The step that matters
Boil quickly for fifteen minutes after adding the sugar. Boiling concentrates the juice and lets the pectin and acid form a gel as water evaporates. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while overlong boiling can darken the flavour and weaken the set.
“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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