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Dessert

Lemon Marmalade

A preserve made from apples, lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and butter, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the apples and the lemon rinds.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and butter to the grated mixture.

  2. Beat all ingredients together until well combined.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and thicken it as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it set into a thick texture.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Apples
Add pectin and body to the grated mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 10 minutes. Eggs can scramble if the mixture boils too hard or too long. Gentle, steady heat keeps the eggs smooth while the mixture thickens.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, butter. 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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