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Dessert

Apples in Jelly

Apples in jelly is a dessert of apples stewed in a gelatinous syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apples in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup of water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and 1½ cups of water to make a syrup; cook until dissolved.

Cook the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples, then stuff them with raisins and cherries.

  2. Place the stuffed apples in the syrup and cook until tender.

  3. Carefully remove the apples and place them in a dish with 1 inch deep sides.

Make the jelly and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and cherry juice to the syrup.

  2. Stir in the dissolved gelatin.

  3. Once the mixture is nearly cool, pour it around and over the apples.

  4. If desired, color the jelly with food coloring.

  5. For individual servings, cut the apples with a round cutter.

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the syrup into a firm jelly that holds the apples in place.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps give the jelly its body.
Apples
Provide the main fruit body that softens in the syrup while keeping its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances its flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture inside the apples.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly when nearly cool. If the mixture is too hot, the gelatin cannot set properly and the jelly may stay loose or cloudy; if it is too cool, it may set before it can be poured smoothly around the apples.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, gelatin, raisin, apple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin, raisin, apple. 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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