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Crab Apple and Plum Marmalade

A marmalade made from crab apples and plums with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crab Apple and Plum Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Cook the apples and plums separately until soft.

  2. Pass through a sieve and measure each pulp.

  3. Mix 3 pints of apple pulp with 1 pint of plum pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of pulp.

  2. Cook slowly, stirring constantly, until very thick.

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 + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 pulp
Provides pectin and body, helping the marmalade set thick.
Plum pulp
Adds flavour and acidity, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens and helps the mixture thicken and set as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly while stirring constantly. Sugar and fruit pulp can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Slow cooking with constant stirring evaporates water gradually so the mixture thickens evenly without burning.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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