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Dessert

Crab-apple Pickle

A pickled preserve made from crab apples, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Crab-apple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar, vinegar, and spices tied in a muslin bag.

  2. Prepare the apples by inserting 3 or 4 cloves into each apple.

  3. Steam the apples until soft.

Pickle

  1. Add the apples to the syrup and let them simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the apples and boil the syrup for an additional 10 minutes.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 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

Crab apples
Form the main body of the pickle, and their softened flesh absorbs the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup, helping preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the apples.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Add a pungent, aromatic spice flavor to the apples and syrup.

The step that matters

Steam the apples until soft. Steaming softens the apples' cell walls so they can absorb the spiced syrup. Steaming too long can make them mushy and cause them to split, while stopping too early leaves them firm and less able to take up flavor.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Quincefits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, vinegar, 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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