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Preserve

Crab Apple Preserves

Preserves made from crab apples, sugar, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

Crab Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. If using Siberian crab apples, wipe them clean; if using French crab apples, peel them.

  2. Place the apples in a pot and simmer until tender.

Make the syrup and pour

  1. In a separate pot, combine sugar and cider to make a boiling syrup.

  2. Reduce the syrup and skim until it thickens.

  3. Pour the thick syrup over the apples in earthenware or glass jars.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  2. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Crab + cidertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Supply the fruit flavour and natural pectin that helps the preserve set.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, concentrated in the syrup, helps it thicken and keep.
Cider
Forms the liquid base of the syrup and adds tartness and aroma.

The step that matters

Reducing the syrup until it thickens. The syrup needs to be boiled down far enough that its sugar concentration and pectin can set into a thick preserve. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make it stiff, dark, or prone to crystallizing.

“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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