Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Jelly

A preserve made from apples, cloves, cassia, sugar, vinegar, and water, boiled until it thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cassia match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 194 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spice Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the apples

  1. Cut the apples into small pieces.

  2. Cover the apples with equal parts vinegar and water.

  3. Tie the spices in a bag and boil with the apples.

Strain and set the jelly

  1. Strain the mixture and add 1 cup of sugar for every cup of juice.

  2. Cook until it jellies.

Jar

  1. Remove the spice bag and pour into 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. Clove + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide pectin, the natural setting agent that lets the juice thicken into a jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with pectin and acid, helps the jelly set firm.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, which helps pectin form a gel and gives a bright tang.
Whole cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma that flavours the jelly as it simmers.
Cassia
Contributes a sweet, warm cinnamon-like aroma to the jelly.

The step that matters

Cook until it jellies. Pectin, sugar and acid only form a gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while cooking too long makes it stiff and dull.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cassia, sugar, vinegar. 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

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes