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 ↓
Siberian Crabs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Prick each apple two or three times with a fork and place them in a pan of water.
Simmer the apples in water or a very weak syrup made with 1 ½ cups of water and 1 pound of sugar.
When the skins begin to crack, remove the apples from the heat and strain the syrup or water.
Preserve in syrup
Transfer the apples to jars and cover them with a weak syrup made with 1 ½ cups of water and 1 ½ pounds of sugar while still boiling hot.
After three or four days, pour off the syrup, boil it again with 6 to 8 ounces more sugar for each pint of water used, and pour it over the apples while boiling.
Repeat this process three times and set the jars aside for use.
Check and store
Check the apples in three to four weeks; if there are any signs of fermentation, pour off the syrup and boil it again as before.
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.
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Apples
- Provide the fruit that softens during simmering and is preserved whole in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and helps preserve them by drawing out water and inhibiting spoilage microbes.
The step that matters
Boiling the syrup each time before pouring it over the apples. Boiling hot syrup helps sterilise the jars and apples and drives off microbes that would otherwise ferment the fruit. Skipping or weakening the boil leaves the preserve vulnerable to fermentation, which the later check is meant to catch.
“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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