Name: Sweet Crab Apple Pickles
Ingredients: Crab apples; Prepared syrup

Why it works: Crab and apple work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sweet Crab Apple Pickles

Ingredients

Crab apples
Prepared syrup

Directions

Steam the crab apples slowly until the skins are broken.
Place the fruit into the prepared syrup and boil slowly until tender.
Transfer the pickles into jars and pour the syrup over them.
Let the syrup drain off in a few days, then reheat and pour it back onto the pickles to enhance flavor and preservation.

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.

Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together343 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Crab + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together742 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).