Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Extract the juice
Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).
Place crab apples and water in a stone jar and bake slowly until apples are soft, about 1 hour.
Strain the juice through a fine sieve until fairly clear.
Make the jelly
For every pint of juice, add 1 lb of sugar and the peel of one lemon.
Boil the mixture for 3 minutes.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together387 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together407 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Apple and sugar 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
- Crab apples
- Supply pectin and acid, which help the juice set into a jelly.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cooked juice set into a firm, glossy jelly.
- Lemon peel
- Adds a bright citrus aroma to the jelly.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice with sugar. Sugar, pectin and acid must reach the right concentration to set. Boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sugar, lemon):
- Limefits better
- Orangefits better
- Raisinfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, lemon. 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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