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Preserve

Crab Apple Preserves

Preserves made from crab apples cooked with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Crab Apple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine the sugar and water, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for 5 minutes, skimming off any foam.

Cook the apples

  1. Add the apples and cook until they are tender.

  2. As you remove apples, add more apples and a little water to the pot.

  3. Transfer the cooked apples into crocks.

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 + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled into syrup, the body that preserves the fruit.
Apples
Provide the fruit, pectin and tartness that give the preserves their flavor and set.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form an even syrup before the fruit is added.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil for 5 minutes, skimming off any foam. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully and concentrates the syrup, which helps preserve the fruit. Skimming foam removes impurities so the preserves look clear and clean.

“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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