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Crab Apple Jelly

Crab Apple Jelly is a preserve made by boiling crab apples with cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crab Apple Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place crab apples in a preserving pan and cover with cold water.

  2. Add cloves and cinnamon, then boil slowly until soft and pulpy.

  3. Pass the mixture through a scalded jelly bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 pound of loaf sugar.

  2. Boil gently for about 1 hour.

  3. Skim frequently until clear and rich in color.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Crab apples
Provide pectin and natural tartness that help the juice set into jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm and hold its shape when cooled.

The step that matters

Skim frequently while boiling. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the sugar cooks. Removing them keeps the jelly clear and prevents cloudiness or off flavors from developing.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, clove, cinnamon, 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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