Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Jelly

Apple jelly is made by boiling sour apples, extracting juice, adding sugar, and setting the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash and quarter the sour apples.

  2. Place the quartered apples in a porcelain kettle and cover them with cold water.

  3. Boil the apples until they break.

  4. Let the boiled apples sit for three days in the kettle or an earthen bowl.

  5. Drain the apples without pressing them.

Make the jelly

  1. Add one pound of sugar for every pint of juice.

  2. Boil the mixture for 45 minutes.

  3. Pour the jelly into a pitcher.

  4. Fill glasses with the jelly.

  5. Cover the glasses.

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).

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

Sour apples
Provide pectin and acidity, which help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set and keep well.

The step that matters

Drain the apples without pressing them.. Pressing forces fine pulp through the cloth, making the juice cloudy. Letting it drip on its own gives a clear 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.

More apple jelly recipes

Crab 92Cake 32Spiced 11Calf's Feet 6Sauce 5Clear 5 See all 409 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes