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Dessert

Preserved Crab-apples

Preserved crab apples are sweetened and boiled with lemon juice, then jarred.

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

Preserved Crab-apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Select nearly perfect crab apples, leaving the stems on.

  2. Place the apples in a pot and cover with warm water.

  3. Heat the pot to boiling, then simmer until the skins break.

  4. Drain the water and skin the apples.

  5. Use a knife to remove the cores through the blossom ends.

  6. Weigh the apples.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Add 1¼ pounds of sugar and 1 teacup of water for each pound of fruit.

  2. Boil the sugar and water until the scum ceases to rise.

  3. Add the fruit to the boiling sugar and water.

  4. Cover and simmer until the apples are clear, red, and tender.

  5. Remove the apples with a skimmer and spread them on dishes to cool.

  6. Add the juice of 1 lemon for every 3 pounds of fruit to the syrup.

  7. Boil the syrup until clear and rich.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars three-quarters full with apples.

  2. Pour the syrup over the apples in the jars.

  3. Tie up the jars when cool.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Siberian crab-apples
Provide the fruit that is cooked until clear, red, and tender in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that preserves it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer the apples gently until just clear. Simmering gently keeps the fruit tender and whole; boiling hard can break the skins and turn the apples mushy. Fruit cooked in syrup stays firm and holds its shape in the jar.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. 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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