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Dessert

Crab Apples

Crab apples are boiled in a sugar syrup to make a sweet preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apple 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup using equal weight of sugar and apples.

  2. Let the syrup cool.

Cook the apples

  1. Add a few crab apples to the syrup at a time to avoid crowding.

  2. Boil the apples until they begin to break.

  3. Remove the apples from the kettle.

Finish and pour

  1. Boil the syrup for three to four days, then pour it hot over the apples.

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 + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + crabtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Apple + crabtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and apple 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

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit as the syrup is boiled.
Crab apples
Supply the fruit flavour and natural pectin that help the syrup thicken.

The step that matters

Add the apples a few at a time. Crowding the pan lowers the temperature of the syrup and slows cooking. The apples then cook unevenly and may break up before the rest are ready.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, crab. 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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