Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Crab-apples

Pickled crab apples are crab apples preserved in a sugar and vinegar syrup with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pickled Crab-apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Leave the crab-apples on the stem and remove the blossom.

  2. Steam the crab-apples until tender.

Make and can the pickles

  1. In a pot, combine sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the syrup, then add the crab-apples and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Can immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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
The fruit that softens in the syrup and carries its sweet-sour flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, in the syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm aroma that flavors the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup before adding the fruit. Boiling the sugar and vinegar together dissolves the sugar fully and heats the liquid so it can penetrate and preserve the fruit. Skimming removes foam that would otherwise cloud the syrup and spoil its clarity.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Quincefits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Crab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes