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Dessert

Sweet Spiced Crab-apple

A sweet preserve of crab apples flavored with vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and mustard seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Spiced Crab-apple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Select the largest and best crab apples.

  2. Cut out any blemishes from the apples.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, water, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and mustard seeds.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook and jar

  1. Add a few apples at a time.

  2. Skim the apples out as soon as they are soft.

  3. Place the softened apples in a jar.

  4. Pour the syrup over the apples in the jar.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 that softens and forms the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it keep as a thick, spreadable syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, pungent aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Skim the apples out as soon as they are soft. Apples cooked past tender continue to break down and turn mushy, so removing them at the right moment keeps their shape and texture intact.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

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