Why it works: Rose and geranium work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry cis-rose oxide, which smells green, flower. The science ↓
Apple Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Make the juice
Slice and boil the apples until thoroughly cooked.
Strain the mixture through a coarse bag to extract the juice.
Make the jelly
For every 1 pint of juice, add 1 lb of sugar.
Boil the juice for 20 minutes with a few leaves of rose geranium for flavor.
Heat the sugar in pie pans in the oven until warm.
Add the heated sugar to the juice and bring to a boil.
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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Rose + geraniumtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together64 recipes
Shared aroma: cis-rose oxide (green, flower).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apple + geraniumtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together13 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Apple + rosetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together235 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,584 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Apples
- Provide the pectin and tart flavor that give the juice its ability to set into jelly.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set.
The step that matters
Boil the juice with sugar until it sets. Pectin and sugar only gel at the right concentration and temperature. Boiling too briefly leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cloudy.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rose, geranium):
- Vanillafits better
- Orangefits better
- Lemonfits about as well
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rose, geranium. 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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