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Canned Crab Apples

Preserved crab apples cooked in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Canned Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine sugar and water to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup for 5 minutes.

Cook and can the apples

  1. Slowly add the prepared crab apples to the syrup, cooking gently to keep them whole.

  2. Optionally, add a few cloves to the syrup while cooking, but remove them before filling the jars.

  3. Once cooked through, remove the apples by the stem and place them in heated jars.

  4. Fill the jars with hot syrup and seal them.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + crabtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  4. Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the apples' shape and texture.
Prepared crab apples
Provide the fruit, which softens and absorbs the syrup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples gently in the syrup. Simmering slowly rather than boiling hard helps the apples cook through while keeping their skins intact and the fruit whole.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, crab, apple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, crab, apple. 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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