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Dessert

Apple Jelly, to Serve At Table

A sweet preserve made by boiling apples, straining the liquid, adding sugar and citrus peel, and cooking until jelly consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Jelly, to Serve At Table

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil the apples in water until tender.

  2. Strain the liquid through a colander.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of liquid, add 1 pound of sugar and grated orange or lemon.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a jelly consistency.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Golden pippin apples
Natural pectin in the apples helps the strained liquid set into a jelly.
Fine sugar
Sugar helps the pectin set and gives the jelly its sweetness and body.
Orange or lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils for a bright, fresh flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches a jelly consistency. Pectin, sugar and acid only form a gel once the mixture reaches the right concentration. Stopping early leaves the jelly runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and can darken and caramelise the sugar.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe 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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