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Sauce

Crab-apple Catsup

A sweet and tart sauce made from crab apples, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Crab-apple Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald the crab apples.

  2. Pass the fruit through a sieve.

Make the catsup

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Boil until the mixture is almost as thick as jam.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide the bulk of the fruit and natural pectin that helps the catsup thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as water evaporates on boiling, helps thicken the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and spice flavour.
Ground pepper
Adds a sharp, pungent note that rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Boil until almost as thick as jam. As water evaporates, sugar and fruit pectin concentrate and thicken the mixture. Catsup also thickens further as it cools, so stopping at the right point matters. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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