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Dessert

Preserved Crab Appees

A preserve made by boiling crab apples in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Preserved Crab Appees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and remove the stems from the crab apples.

  2. Measure the same weight of sugar as the crab apples and add a little water to dissolve it.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the crab apples in batches to the syrup.

  2. When the apples begin to crack, remove them to a jar.

  3. Once all apples are done, boil the syrup for a few moments and skim off any foam.

  4. Pour the syrup over the crab apples and store in a cool, dry place.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. 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, whose tart flesh and pectin give the preserve its body and bright flavour.
Sugar
Dissolves into syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup and skim the foam. Sugar syrup must be hot enough to dissolve fully and bring impurities to the surface; skimming removes foam that can spoil or cloud the preserve.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, 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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