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Dessert

Apples in Red Jelly

Apples cooked in a red jelly made from lemon, sugar, water, and carmine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apples in Red Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples whole.

  2. Insert the cloves into the apples.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add carmine for color.

  4. Add the apples and cook gently until tender.

  5. Carefully lift the apples out and place them in a dish.

  6. Mix cornflour with a little cold water.

  7. Stir the cornflour mixture into the hot syrup.

  8. Boil the syrup for a few minutes.

  9. Pour the syrup 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. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Hold their shape while cooking gently and become tender, forming the dish's main body.
Cornflour
Thickens the syrup into a glossy, jelly-like coating when heated with the liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the liquid it is cooked in.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma to the syrup, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the cornflour mixture into the hot syrup. Cornflour must be mixed with cold water first so it does not clump. It then needs to be boiled for a few minutes so its starch swells fully and thickens the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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