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Preserved Pippins

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple 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.

  4. Cover closely.

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

  6. Remove the apples.

  7. 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 strained juice to the kettle.

  3. Add 1 pound of loaf sugar for each pint of juice and lemon juice to taste.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, skimming well.

Finish and seal

  1. Add the whole apples.

  2. Boil slowly for half an hour until soft and clear.

  3. Transfer the apples and juice into jars.

  4. Let them cool completely.

  5. Seal 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. Lemon + appletop 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

Pippins
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and holds its shape when cooked in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, as it dissolves and reduces, thickens it and helps preserve the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the syrup set clear.
Apple parings
Add extra pectin and apple flavour to the cooking liquid, which is strained away later.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until tender without burning them. Gentle, covered boiling with enough liquid softens the fruit evenly. Scorching sugars and proteins on the kettle base gives a bitter, dark taste that spreads into the juice.

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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