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Crab-apple Jelly

Crab-Apple Jelly is a sweet preserve made from crab apples, water, sugar, and optional cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Crab-apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash and quarter the crab apples, then cover them with water.

  2. Stew the crab apples until they are well broken.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jelly bag and drain without squeezing.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add one pound of sugar.

  2. Boil the juice alone for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. For added flavor, boil a stick of cinnamon with the juice and remove it before adding the sugar.

  4. Heat the sugar while the juice is boiling, then add it slowly, stirring constantly.

  5. If the mixture jellies before all the sugar is dissolved, it requires little boiling.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  5. Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide the pectin and acidity that allow the juice to set into jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firmly when dissolved into the boiling juice.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar to the boiling juice. Sugar added slowly and stirred constantly dissolves fully without scorching or crystallizing. Undissolved sugar can leave a grainy texture, and the mixture may set before the sugar is fully dissolved.

“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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