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Preserve

Crab-apples

Preserved crab apples in a sugar syrup, boiled until tender and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Crab-apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining equal weights of crab apples and sugar.

Prepare the apples

  1. Simmer the crab apples in water until the skins come off easily.

  2. Remove the apples and core them using a cutter or sharp knife.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the cored apples in the syrup until tender.

  2. Remove the apples and spread them on dishes to cool.

  3. Place the cooled apples in jars and pour the syrup over them.

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

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

  2. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Crab + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Crab apples
Provide the fruit itself, along with natural pectin that helps the preserves set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at this concentration, helps preserve it and firm its texture.

The step that matters

Boil the cored apples until tender. Overcooking breaks the fruit down into mush. The sugar syrup gradually draws water out of the apples, so timing the boil controls both texture and how much the fruit softens.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, 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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