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Dessert

Apple Marmalade

A preserve made from apples, water, sugar, and optional brandy or mutton suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, then cut them into pieces and place them in a preserving pan.

  2. Add enough water to cover the apples and boil until they reduce to a mash.

  3. Pass the mash through a colander.

Make the marmalade

  1. For each pound of pulp, add 12 ounces of sugar and boil until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  2. Test for jelly as you would for apple jelly.

Pot and seal

  1. Once cool, transfer to pots.

  2. Cover with paper dipped in brandy or melted mutton suet, securing with paper or bladder.

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 + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + muttontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (green, grassy).

  5. Apple + muttontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together278 recipes

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

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 bulk of the pulp and the pectin that lets the mixture set.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken into a jelly-like set.
Water
Covers the apples so they soften and break down into a mash.

The step that matters

Boiling to a jelly consistency. Apples contain pectin and acid that set the mixture, but overcooking or undercooking changes the set. Testing for a jelly stage shows when enough water has evaporated and sugar has concentrated to firm up on cooling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Currantfits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, mutton. 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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