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Spiced Jelly

A jelly made from crab apples, vinegar, water, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spiced Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine crab apples, vinegar, water, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves in a pot.

  2. Boil until the apples are soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  4. For each pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar.

  5. Boil for 20 minutes.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide pectin, the natural setting agent, and the main fruit flavour and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep its texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, which helps pectin set and brightens the flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes after adding the sugar. Pectin, sugar and acid must reach a sufficiently high concentration and temperature to form a gel. Boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while the sugar and acid balance controls whether it sets firmly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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