Skip to main content
Dessert

Siberian Crab Apple Jelly

A jelly made from crab apples, water, lemon, and sugar, boiled and set in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Siberian Crab Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wash the crab apples in two waters and spread them on a cloth-covered table.

  2. Select the finest apples, cut off the stems, remove the blossom end, and slice them into three pieces, including skins, cores, and seeds.

  3. Weigh the apples, then combine them with 1 quart of cold water and 1 sliced lemon in a porcelain preserving kettle.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, then strain through a linen cloth, repeating the straining process.

  2. For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of white granulated sugar to the preserving kettle and stir well.

  3. Once it begins to boil, skim the surface and boil for 5 minutes until it sets as jelly.

Jar

  1. Pour the jelly into glasses lined with brandy-dipped double writing paper and seal with metal covers once cool.

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. Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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

Crab apples
Their natural pectin and acidity help the jelly set.
Lemon
Adds acidity that supports pectin setting and brightens the flavor.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set and keep its gel structure.

The step that matters

Boiling until the jelly sets. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar so pectin and acid can form a gel. Too short a boil leaves it runny, while overboiling can make it stiff or cloudy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, lemon, 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.

More crab apple jelly recipes

and Jam 3 See all 92 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes