Why it works: Crab and apple work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Crab-apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Quarter the crab-apples and remove any black spots from the cores.
Place the apples in a preserving kettle with ½ cup of water to prevent burning.
Cook
Add more water as it evaporates while cooking.
Boil the apples until they become a pulp.
Strain and make jelly
Strain the pulp through a coarse flannel.
Proceed to make jelly as you would with currant jelly.
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.
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Crab + appletop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together343 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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 acid, which help the strained juice set into a firm jelly.
The step that matters
Adding water as it evaporates. Apples held over direct heat with too little liquid can scorch on the bottom of the kettle, which gives the jelly a burnt taste. Keeping some liquid in the pot protects the flavour while the fruit softens.
“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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