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Dessert

Glaced Crab-apples

A sweet dish of hard red apples baked with sugar, cinnamon, and cassia buds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and cassia match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 116 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Glaced Crab-apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Select a peck of hard red apples.

  2. Layer the apples and sugar in stone jars, adding cinnamon and cassia buds between layers.

Bake

  1. Cover the jars with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cassiatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into tender fruit during slow baking.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and thickens into a syrupy glaze as it cooks.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that pairs with the sweet fruit and syrup.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C). A moderate oven softens the apples slowly and lets the sugar syrup thicken gradually. Too much heat can scorch the sugar before the fruit is tender, so the jars need steady, even heat.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, cassia. 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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