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Dessert

Sweet Crab Apples

Preserves made from crab apples, vinegar, brown sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place crab apples in a kettle and cover with vinegar.

  2. Cook until tender, then remove and place in jars.

Make the syrup

  1. Measure the vinegar and add 1 pint more than needed to cover the fruit.

  2. For each pint of vinegar, add 1½ pints of brown sugar, 2 sticks of cinnamon, 3 tablespoons of cloves, and 2 tablespoons of mace.

  3. Tie the spices in a bag and boil in the syrup for 30 minutes.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit in 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Form the main body of the preserve and carry the fruit flavor.
Vinegar
Acts as the sharp preserving liquid that flavors and helps keep the fruit.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, balancing the vinegar's acidity.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the syrup as it steeps with the fruit.
Cloves
Adds strong spiced aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a delicate spiced aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until tender before jarring. Fruit that is undercooked stays firm and may not absorb the syrup well, while overcooking makes it collapse. Cooking to tenderness lets the fruit take up the spiced vinegar syrup evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, apple, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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