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Crab Apples Preserved

Preserved crab apples are boiled with sugar and water, then jarred with syrup.

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 Apples Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Select good sound crab apples and remove the ends, leaving the stems on.

  2. Wash the apples and place them in a preserving kettle with enough water to cover them.

  3. Bring the water to a boil, gently pushing the apples down to keep them submerged.

  4. When the skins begin to crack, remove the apples and place them on a dish.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1½ pounds of sugar and boil for 15 to 20 minutes, skimming until clear.

  2. Return the apples to the juice in batches, boiling each batch for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the apples again and add the remaining fruit to the juice, boiling for the same amount of time.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars with the apples to the top.

  2. Boil down the remaining juice for about 10 minutes and pour it over the fruit in the jars.

  3. Seal the jars tightly and store them away.

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
Provide the fruit that is cooked and preserved whole in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the apples in batches. Boiling the apples only until the skins crack and in small batches helps them keep their shape instead of breaking down into mush while they cook in the syrup.

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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