Skip to main content
Drink

Crab Apple Pickle

A pickled crab apple preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and crab apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Crab Apple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar and sugar. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add cloves, cinnamon, and allspice to the boiling mixture.

Cook and seal

  1. Remove the blossom end from the crab apples.

  2. Carefully add as many apples as will fit without crowding the pot.

  3. Cook the apples until they can be easily pierced with a straw.

  4. Seal the pickles in glass fruit jars.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the apples and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown or maple sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and adds sweetness and body to the syrup.
Crab apples
Provide the fruit that softens in the hot syrup and absorbs its flavor.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds a warm, peppery aroma that complements the other spices.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until they can be easily pierced with a straw. Under-cooked apples stay firm and do not take up the syrup, while overcooking makes them collapse. Piercing with a straw is a simple check of how far the fruit has softened and absorbed the hot, acidic syrup.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, crab. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesApple WaterApple Water81 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes