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Preserved Pippins

Preserved pippins are apples boiled with lemon peel, parings, water, sugar, and lemon juice, then jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Preserved Pippins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the pippins.

  2. Place them in a preserving kettle with lemon peel and apple parings.

  3. Add a little water and cover closely.

  4. Boil until tender, being careful not to burn them.

  5. Remove the apples and spread them on a large dish to cool.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the liquid into a bag and strain it well.

  2. Return the juice to the kettle and add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of juice.

  3. Add lemon juice to taste and boil for 5 minutes, skimming well.

  4. Add the whole apples and boil slowly for 30 minutes or until soft and clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the apples and juice into jars and let cool completely.

  2. Seal jars with brandy paper.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Large pippins (apples)
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and holds its shape in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the apples set clear and firm as the syrup thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the apples' colour clear.
Lemon peel
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that scent the juice during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the apples slowly. Boiling vigorously can break the apples apart and make the syrup cloudy. A gentle simmer lets them soften evenly while the sugar concentrates and the fruit turns clear.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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