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Crab Apple Jellt

A preserve made from crab apples, boiled and sweetened with white sugar.

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

Crab Apple Jellt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Fill your preserving kettle with crab apples and cover them with water.

  2. Boil until the apples are very soft.

  3. Drain the water through a cloth.

Make the jelly

  1. For each pint of the drained water, add one pound of white sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil before adding the sugar.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

Set and store

  1. Pour into glasses or small jars and cover with thick paper once cool.

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

Crab apples
Provides pectin and tartness that help the juice set into a jelly.
White sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it set into a firm, spreadable gel.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin so the liquid can gel as it cools. Too short a boil leaves the jelly runny, while a much longer boil can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

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.

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