Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
Crab Apple and Apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the crab apples and cut them into small pieces without peeling.
Barely cover the apples with cold water in a pot.
Cook until the apples are soft, then strain the mixture.
For added flavor, cook with a little lemon or orange peel or root ginger.
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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Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,154 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,424 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together387 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Crab + gingertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, apple, ginger):
- Pearfits better
- Quincefits better
- Plumfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against crab, apple, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More crab apple jelly recipes
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