Name: Apple and Vegetable Marrow Jam
Ingredients: Equal quantities of apple and vegetable marrow, cut into small pieces; 1½ lb sugar; ½ pint water for each lb of fruit

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple and Vegetable Marrow Jam

Ingredients

Equal quantities of apple and vegetable marrow, cut into small pieces
1½ lb sugar
½ pint water for each lb of fruit

Directions

Boil the sugar and water together to make a thin syrup.
Add the fruit to the syrup.
Boil until the fruit is clear and the syrup sets when a little is placed on a plate.

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.

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

Apple: Adds pectin and body, helping the jam thicken and set as it cooks.
Vegetable marrow: Provides the bulk of the fruit and soft, tender texture in the finished jam.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and, boiled into syrup, helps preserve it and aid setting.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup sets. Undercooking leaves the jam runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking makes it stiff. The plate test shows when sugar and pectin have reached the concentration needed to gel as it cools.

“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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Apple and Vegetable Marrow Jam