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Dessert

Apple Jelly

A preserved apple jelly made by boiling codlings with lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Quarter the codlings and place them in a preserving pan with the lemon peel, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Add enough spring water to just cover the codlings.

Make the juice

  1. Boil the mixture until it becomes a pulp.

  2. Strain the pulp through a jelly bag.

Jelly and pot

  1. For every pint of juice, add 2 lb. of sugar and boil rapidly until it jellies.

  2. Pour the jelly into pots or 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Codlings
Provide the pectin and tart flavour that give the jelly its body and taste.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set when boiled with the juice.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar until it jellies. Sugar and pectin set the jelly only at a high enough concentration and temperature. Boiling rapidly reduces water and concentrates both, so the jelly sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny; boiling too long can make it stiff or darken it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, 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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