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 ↓
Apple Juice for Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Peel, core, and weigh the apples.
Place the apples in a stewpan with the water and simmer gently until broken.
Strain the juice from the apples.
Finish the juice
Boil the juice again with ½ pound of sugar for each pint of juice for 5 minutes.
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.
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Apples
- Provide the pectin and acid that help the juice later set into jelly.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the juice thicken and set when used for jelly.
The step that matters
Simmering the apples until broken. Simmering gently until the apples break down releases their juice and pectin. If they are undercooked, less juice and pectin come out, which weakens the later set of the jelly.
“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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