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Dessert

Matrimonial Jam

A jam made from plums, apples, pears, sugar, and ginger, boiled for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Matrimonial Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine plums, apples, pears, and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Add ginger root to taste.

  3. Boil the mixture for one hour.

  4. Pour the jam into glasses and let it 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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  4. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Plum + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide fruit pectin and tart flavor that give the jam body and balance the sugar.
Apples
Add natural pectin that helps the jam thicken and set as it cooks.
Pears
Contribute mild sweetness, soft texture, and body to the fruit mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam, helps it thicken, and acts as a preservative by binding water.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for one hour. Sugar and fruit pectin only set into a jam when enough water evaporates and the mixture reaches a sufficiently high concentration. Too short a boil leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can make it dark and taste caramelized.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, apple, pear, 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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