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Crab-apple Catsup

A sweet and tangy condiment made from crab apples, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the crab apples and run them through a sieve.

  2. Mix the strained fruit with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens to a jam-like consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide pectin and tart fruit pulp that forms the body of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, warm aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until jam-like. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin from the fruit. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin, while cooking too long makes it stiff and can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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