Name: Spiced Crab Apples
Ingredients: 4 pounds sugar; 2 ounces whole allspice; 2 quarts cider vinegar; Crabapples to fill a two-gallon jar; 2 ounces whole cloves; 2 ounces stick cinnamon

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Tie the allspice, cloves, and cinnamon in a muslin bag.
Steam the crabapples until tender.

Make the pickling liquid

In a pot, boil the vinegar, sugar, and spice bag for 30 minutes.

Pack and store

Pour the hot liquid over the crabapples in the jar and place the spice bag on top.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 pickling liquid and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar: Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Crabapples: Form the main fruit that absorbs the spiced, sweet-sour liquid.
Whole allspice: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Whole cloves: Contribute strong aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Stick cinnamon: Adds sweet, woody aroma and warmth to the pickling liquid.

“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.