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Exceedingly Fine Apple Jelly

A sweet preserve made from sliced apples, sugar, and lemon juice, cooked into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Exceedingly Fine Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and slice the apples, removing stalks and seeds, and place them in clean large stone jars.

  2. Dip layers of apples in cold water to preserve color.

  3. Set the jars in pans of water and boil slowly until the apples are soft.

Extract the juice

  1. Turn the cooked apples into a jelly bag or cloth.

  2. Let the juice drain from the apples.

  3. Weigh the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in 12 oz of sugar for every quart of juice until dissolved.

  3. Return the mixture to heat.

  4. Stir continuously and skim off any scum.

  5. Boil for 8 to 10 minutes.

  6. Add the juice of 2 small lemons and optional lemon rind 2-3 minutes before pouring into molds.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Apples
Provide the fruit body and natural pectin that lets the juice set into jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with boiling, helps it set firm and keep.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports pectin setting.

The step that matters

Boil for 8 to 10 minutes after adding sugar. Sugar and acid must be boiled to the right concentration so pectin gels when cooled. Boiling too briefly leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can darken flavor and toughen the set.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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