Skip to main content
Dessert

Siberian Crab Apple

A preserved fruit made by boiling Siberian crab apples in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Siberian Crab Apple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Weigh the crab apples.

  2. In a pot, combine equal weights of sugar and water to make a syrup.

  3. Bring the syrup to a boil.

Cook the apples

  1. Carefully drop the apples into the boiling syrup and cook until tender but not breaking.

  2. Remove the apples and let them cool.

Finish and jar

  1. Boil the syrup for three days and pour it over the apples in a jar.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

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

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

Siberian crab apples
Provide the fruit, with natural tartness and pectin that help the apples hold their shape and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until tender but not breaking. Fruit softens as its cell walls and pectin break down in hot syrup. Cooking too long causes the skins to split and the flesh to turn mushy, so check often and remove them as soon as they are tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, 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.

You might also like

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