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Dessert

Apple Marmalade

A fruit preserve made from apples, sugar, and cinnamon, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples.

  2. Place the sliced apples in a saucepan and add enough water to barely cover them.

  3. Boil the apples until they become quite pulpy.

  4. Pass the pulpy apples through a sieve.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add the sugar and cinnamon to the apple pulp.

  2. Boil the mixture again, stirring constantly for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Place the marmalade in jars and cover them as soon as possible.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Break down into pulp that forms the body and thickness of the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture again, stirring constantly for at least 30 minutes. Sugar-rich fruit pulp can scorch on the bottom of the pan as its water evaporates and sugar concentrates. Constant stirring prevents burning and lets the mixture reduce evenly to a thick, spreadable set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. 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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