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Crab Apples

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Crab Apples

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Take a portion of the fondant and color it yellow.

  2. Color a similar portion red and another portion white.

  3. Prepare chocolate fondant by heating it to incorporate the chocolate.

  4. Form the colored fondants into triangular strips and combine them into a round roll with thin edges to the center.

  5. Roll out the mixture to the size of your thumb.

  6. Cut into even pieces and roll each piece into round balls.

  7. Make indentations on the ends where the colors meet using a pointed stick or push a whole clove into one end to represent the blossom.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + clovetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together534 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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