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Apple Mint Jelly

A jelly made from crab or sour apples, spearmint, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

Apple Mint Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Add water, but do not cover the apples completely.

  3. Simmer until soft, stirring occasionally.

  4. Drain the mixture in a bag and measure the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. For each cup of juice, use ¾ cup of sugar and heat the sugar in the oven.

  2. Heat the apple juice to boiling, then boil for 10-15 minutes, skimming as needed.

  3. Add the hot sugar and boil again until it jellies on a cold saucer.

  4. Add spearmint sprigs and enough green vegetable coloring to achieve a delicate green.

Set and layer

  1. Strain into glasses, filling them halfway.

  2. Once firm, add more jelly made without mint and coloring.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  2. Sugar + spearminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Crab + spearminttop 42% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1 recipe

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples or sour apples
Provide natural pectin and tartness that help the juice set into jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with boiling, helps the juice thicken and set.
Spearmint sprigs
Infuse the jelly with mint aroma and flavor.
Green vegetable coloring
Tints the jelly a delicate green for visual appeal.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies on a cold saucer. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin until the mixture reaches the gel point. Underboiling leaves a runny jelly, while overboiling can make it stiff and cloudy. The cold saucer test shows when it has set.

Swap the spearmint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Spearmintthe 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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