Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Apples

A method for preserving apples in a sugar and lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Preserved Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, leaving them whole or cutting them into quarters.

  2. Weigh the apples and use an equal weight of loaf sugar.

  3. Place the apples in a pot with just enough water to cover them and simmer for about 30 minutes until parboiled.

  4. Strain the apple water over the sugar in a preserving kettle.

Make the syrup and cook the apples

  1. Heat the mixture until the sugar melts, then add the lemon rind.

  2. Boil the syrup until clear and thick, skimming carefully.

  3. Add the apples and boil slowly for 15 minutes, then add the lemon juice.

  4. Continue boiling until the apples are tender and clear, but not breaking.

Seal and finish

  1. Once cooled, transfer the apples to jars and seal tightly for a week.

  2. After a week, boil the apples again in the same syrup.

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and clear as they cook in syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in a syrup, preserves it by drawing out water.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the syrup and fruit balanced.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the apples are tender and clear, but not breaking. Boiling too hard or too long breaks the apple pieces apart, while stopping too early leaves them firm and opaque. Slow simmering lets sugar syrup gradually replace the water in the fruit, giving clear, intact pieces.

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.

More preserved apples recipes

with Ginger 5for Tea 3 See all 47 →

You might also like

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