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Dessert

California Marmalade

A marmalade made from peaches, pears, pineapple, oranges, lemons, and crabapples, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 114 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

California Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the peaches, pears, and oranges, then cut them into eighths.

  2. Cut the pineapple into small pieces and slice the lemons very thin.

Cook and seal

  1. Weigh all the fruit and add ¾ of that weight in sugar.

  2. Simmer the mixture gently for 2 hours after it starts boiling, stirring as little as possible.

  3. Seal the marmalade when it has cooled.

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. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

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

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Pear + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set and keep.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Oranges
Add bright citrus flavour and pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Crabapples
Add pectin to help the mixture set.
Peaches
Add fruity aroma and a soft body to the spread.
Pineapple
Adds tropical sweetness and moisture to the fruit mix.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, stirring as little as possible. A vigorous boil or constant stirring breaks the fruit down unevenly and can scorch the sugar. A gentle simmer lets water evaporate slowly while sugar and pectin concentrate, so the marmalade sets with a clear texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, pear, pineapple, orange, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pear, pineapple, orange, 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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