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Dessert

Carrot Marmalade

A preserve made from boiled carrots, sugar, water, citrus peel, ginger, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Carrot Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Drain and peel the carrots, then press them through a colander.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine the pressed carrots, sugar, and water.

  2. Add the chipped lemon peel, grated orange rind, ginger pieces, and bay leaves.

  3. Simmer gently until the mixture reaches the proper consistency.

  4. Transfer the marmalade to tumblers for storage.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young carrots
Form the bulk of the marmalade and provide body once pressed and cooked down.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as the mixture cooks.
Lemon peel
Adds bright acidity and aromatic oils that contribute citrus flavour.
Orange rind
Adds citrus aroma and bitter-sweet flavour from the zest oils.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the proper consistency. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, and the mixture thickens as it cooks. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard reduces the risk of scorching the sugar-rich mixture on the base of the kettle and lets it set evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange, ginger. 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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