Skip to main content
Dessert

Crabapple Preserves

A sweet preserve made from whole crabapples cooked with sugar and water.

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

Crabapple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the crabapples and leave them whole.

  2. In a preserving kettle, combine the crabapples and sugar.

  3. Add enough water to prevent sticking.

Cook and seal

  1. Cook until the crabapples are transparent and the syrup is thick.

  2. Seal the preserves while hot.

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

What each ingredient does

Crabapples
Form the fruit base and, with their natural pectin, help the preserves set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cook until the crabapples are transparent and the syrup is thick. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that may not set, while cooking too long can over-thicken or scorch the sugar. Sugar concentration and pectin together determine the final 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes