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Sauce

Crab Apple Catsup

A sweet and tangy condiment made from crab apples, sugar, vinegar, cloves, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Crab Apple Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and prepare the crab apples.

Cook the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the crab apples and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Add the vinegar, ground cloves, black pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir well and continue to cook for a few more 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab apples
Provide the fruit body and natural pectin that helps the ketchup thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture while preserving it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. As water evaporates, the sugar and the apples' natural pectin concentrate and let the sauce set. Stop too early and it stays runny; cook too long and it turns stiff and sticky.

Swap the apple

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

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

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