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Dessert

Crab Apple Preserves

Preserves made from crab apples, sugar, and cider, simmered and sweetened into a thick syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Crab Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. If using Siberian crabs, wipe them clean; if using French crabs, peel them.

  2. Place the apples in a pot and simmer until tender.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, combine the sugar and cider to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup, reducing it and skimming until thick.

Finish

  1. Pour the thick syrup over the apples in earthenware or glass 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. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  2. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Crab + cidertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide the fruit, pectin and tart flavor that form the preserve's body.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled down, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Cider
Dissolves the sugar into a liquid syrup and adds fruity acidity.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the syrup until thick. Sugar syrup must reduce enough to reach a high concentration, which thickens the preserve and helps keep it from spoiling. Skimming removes foam and impurities so the syrup stays clear and smooth.

“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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