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Apple Jelly. Jelee De Pommes.

Apple jelly made by cooking apples with water, sugar, and lemon juice until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Jelly. Jelee De Pommes.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and cut the apples into pieces.

  2. Wash and rub the apples in hot water to clean thoroughly.

Cook the apples

  1. Drain the apples and place them in a pan with just enough water to cover.

  2. Boil gently until the apples are soft but not broken.

  3. Drain the apples in a colander.

Make the jelly

  1. For every 2 tablespoons of sugar, add 3 tablespoons of strong juice or 4 tablespoons of weak juice.

  2. Combine the sugar and juice in a pot over high heat until it thickens.

  3. Add the juice of a lemon and pour into pots or molds.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 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
Their natural pectin helps the cooked juice set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sugar binds water and helps the pectin form a gel, while adding sweetness.
Lemon juice
Its acidity helps pectin set and brightens the flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Thickening the sugar and juice. This boil is where the jelly sets. Too little cooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or sugary. Pectin, sugar and acid must reach the right balance to gel.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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