Just type in Crab Apple recipes to Google and a plethora of ideas will arrive, Crab apple and Sloes, and Rowan, and chili etc etc. Eat it with meat, on sandwiches, as a jelly.
In Elizabethan times they used to use crab apples or cooking apples as we now use gelatine.
Try this as a recipe - I have and it works!
Apple Chartreuse
Ingredients:
1 large cooking apple (or equivalent crab apples)
1/2 pint water
8oz lump or cane sugar
pared rind and strained juice of a lemon
2 - 3 crisp apples (Cox, Russet, Sturmer, Braeburn etc)
4oz candied fruit (the large piece type) chopped.
Few Glace Cherries
Directions:
Wipe the cooking apple and remove the stalk and the eye, but do not remove the peel, core or pips. Cut into slices and place in a pan with the water, cover and simmer until pulpy. Tip into a nylon strainer over a bowl and leave undisturbed until all the juice runs through. Measure the amount of juice - you need 7 1/2 fl oz, and put this in a large shallow pan with the sugar, lemon rind and juice, and out over a low heat. When all the sugar has dissolved, boil the juice steadily for 5 minutes, then draw the pan aside and remove the lemon rind; Peel and core the dessert apples and slice straight into the pan of juice. Slice them very thinly, about 1/8th inch thick. Cover the pan and simmer very gently for 10 - 12 minutes. Turn the apples very occasionally, taking care not to break them or to let the syrup boil - it should just simmer gently. After this time, take the lid off the pan and continue cooking until there is just enough syrup to moisten the apple slices. Take off the heat and add the chopped candied peel, cover the pan and leave until the apples slices are clear.
Tip into a wet cake tin or souffle dish and leave in a cool place to set. No gelatine is needed as it uses its own pectin to set.
Turn out onto