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Another Way to Make Apple Jelly

A sweet preserve made from boiled apples, lemon juice, and sugar.

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 ↓

Another Way to Make Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and mince the apples.

  2. Place them in a pan and cover with water.

  3. Boil until very soft.

  4. Strain through a thin cloth or flannel bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, use 1 pound of loaf sugar.

  2. Clarify and boil the sugar.

  3. Add the apple juice, lemon juice, and grated peel.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

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
Provide pectin and acid that help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and firming the gel.
Lemons
Add acidity that supports pectin setting and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes, skimming off any scum. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin so the jelly can set; scum that is left on the surface can cloud the jelly and spoil its clarity.

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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