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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Crabapples

A preserved crabapple dish sweetened with vinegar, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.

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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Crabapples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, ginger root, cinnamon, and cloves in a muslin bag in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the steamed crabapples and boil for a few minutes.

Pack and finish

  1. Skim out the crabapples and place them in stone jars.

  2. Boil the syrup down to half its volume and pour it over the crabapples.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Siberian crabapples
Provide the fruit that softens in the hot syrup and absorbs its spiced flavor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Add strong, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down to half its volume. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and vinegar, which helps preserve the fruit and gives the pickle a thicker, more intense flavor. Boiling it too little leaves it weaker and less protective.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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