Skip to main content
Dessert

Jellied Apples

A dessert of boiled apples set in a clear sugar syrup with lemon.

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 ↓

Jellied Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Place the apples in enough water to cover them with sliced lemons and boil until tender.

  3. Remove the apples and lemons from the water.

Make the jelly

  1. Make a syrup with ½ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit and add the apples and sliced lemons.

  2. Boil gently until clear, then skim into a deep dish.

  3. Dissolve 1 ounce of isinglass or gelatine in a little water, add to the syrup, and boil briefly.

  4. Garnish the apples with lemon slices and strain the syrup over them.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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

Small-sized apples
Form the fruit that the clear jelly holds and surrounds.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it set firm as it cools.
Isinglass or gelatine
Sets the syrup into a jelly as it cools.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the isinglass or gelatine briefly. Gelatine and isinglass are proteins that set on cooling, and prolonged or vigorous boiling can weaken their gelling power, so the mixture should only be brought to the boil briefly after they are added.

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.

You might also like

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