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Dessert

Preparing Marmalades and Preserves

A fruit preserve made by boiling firm fruits with sugar until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Preparing Marmalades and Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the fruits in clear water until tender.

  2. Pass the cooked fruits through a sieve.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Add sugar to the fruit puree.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. To test for doneness, place a small amount on a saucer and let it cool. If no juice gathers, it is done.

Store

  1. Transfer to jelly tumblers or small jars and store in a cool, dry pantry.

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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

Firm fruits
Provide pectin and body that help the puree thicken and set as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the puree and helps it thicken and set into a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness on a cooled saucer. Boiling the mixture too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking makes it stiff. A small sample cooled on a saucer shows whether it has reached a set, so the test prevents guessing.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Quincethe original
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, apple, crab, 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.

More marmalade recipes

Orange 487Quince 144Peach 113Apple 87Pudding 74Pineapple 64 See all 21 →

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