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Preserve

Pickled Siberian Crab Apples

Siberian crab apples are steamed, then simmered in a sugar and vinegar syrup spiced with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pickled Siberian Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Leave the stem on the crab apples and remove the blossom end.

  2. Steam the crab apples in a steamer until tender.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the sugar and vinegar together for 10 minutes to make the syrup.

  2. Skim the syrup, then add the crab apples and boil for 5 to 10 minutes without breaking them.

  3. Can the mixture immediately.

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. 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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 crab apples
Provide the fruit that is pickled, keeping its shape when boiled in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, forms the syrup that preserves the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds a pungent spiced aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the crab apples for 5 to 10 minutes without breaking them. Sugar syrup firms the fruit's cell walls as it boils, but overcooking softens them until the apples fall apart. Adding the fruit to syrup that is already skimmed and boiling keeps the pieces intact and the syrup clear.

Swap the apple

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

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

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