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Dessert

Crab Apple Jelly

A jelly made from crab apples, water, sugar, and flavored with geranium leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Crab Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place the crab apples in a kettle and cover them with water.

  2. Boil until very soft.

  3. Mash the apples and strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure 1 pint of juice and add 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in a few geranium leaves for flavor.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  2. Apple + geraniumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Crab + sugartop 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 + geraniumtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Apple and sugar 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

Crab apples
Provide the pectin and tart acidity that let the juice set into jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep its firm texture.
Geranium leaves
Add a subtle aromatic flavor to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar so the pectin can gel; boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cloudy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sugar, geranium):

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Applethe original
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Quincefits less well

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