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Apple Catchup

A preserved apple condiment made with apples, sugar, cloves, mustard, cinnamon, sea salt, vinegar, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Catchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Place the quartered, peeled, and cored apples in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Simmer until soft, allowing nearly all the water to evaporate.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to obtain the pulp.

Make the chutney

  1. For each quart of pulp, add sugar, cloves, mustard, cinnamon, coarse sea salt, vinegar, and grated onions.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then let it simmer gently for one hour.

  3. Bottle, cork, and seal the catchup.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which gives the chutney its body and natural pectin.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and sour apples.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the chutney its tang and helps preserve it.
Grated onions
Add savory flavour and some moisture to the cooked pulp.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture for one hour. Long gentle simmering lets the pulp thicken as water evaporates and the flavours meld. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pan, so the heat should stay low.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, clove, mustard, cinnamon, vinegar. 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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