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Rhubarb and Apple Jelly

A jelly made from rhubarb, sour apples, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and apple work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Rhubarb and Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the rhubarb into small pieces and cook over low heat without adding water.

  2. Pare and quarter the sour apples, then cook them in a small amount of water.

  3. Strain the juice from both the rhubarb and apples, then measure the total juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice for 20 minutes.

  2. Heat ¾ pint of sugar for each pint of juice in the oven.

  3. Add the heated sugar to the juice and boil for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Pour the jelly into glasses and set them in the sun for a few hours.

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. Rhubarb + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Rhubarb
Provides tartness and most of the juice that forms the jelly base.
Sour apples
Add natural pectin and acidity that help the juice set into a jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, boiled with it, helps the jelly thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar into the juice. Sugar must be fully dissolved and the mixture boiled long enough to reach the setting point. Too little boiling leaves a runny jelly, while overboiling can make it stiff or caramelise.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Rhubarbthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

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.

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