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Crab Apple Marmalade with Plum Syrup

A preserved spread made from crab apples, plum syrup, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crab Apple Marmalade with Plum Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Remove the flower remains and stems from the crab apples.

  2. Place the apples in a large pot with the cold water and boil until soft.

  3. Pass the cooked apples through a sieve or colander to extract the juice.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the sugar and plum syrup to the apple juice and boil until thick.

  2. Pour the thickened mixture into pie plates and let it cool until stiff.

Serve

  1. Cover with paper and cut into slices to serve.

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 + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  5. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Provide the pectin and tart flavour that give the marmalade its body and character.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as the mixture cooks down.
Plum syrup
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour while contributing to the thickened, sticky texture.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and plum syrup into the apple juice until thick. Sugar and fruit pectin set together as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves a runny marmalade that will not stiffen on cooling, while overcooking can make it hard and sticky.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, apple, syrup, sugar. 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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