Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Siberian Crabs

A method for preserving Siberian crabs in a sugar syrup with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Preserve Siberian Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves until flavored.

  2. Strain the mixture and boil it with sugar for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the syrup cool, then add the crabs and heat until scalding hot.

Preserve the crabs

  1. Remove from heat and let cool nearly, then heat again three times.

  2. If the crabs look clear, carefully remove them to a jar and continue boiling the rest until clear.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Siberian crabs
Provide the tart fruit that is softened and preserved in the sweet syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Heating the crabs in cooling syrup again and again. Repeated heating and cooling lets the syrup slowly penetrate the fruit without bursting it. Heating once and cooling quickly can leave the fruit tough or cloudy, while overcooking can break it apart.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, ginger, sugar, crab. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes