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Dessert

New-england Apple-jam

A jam made from tart apples, light-brown sugar, lemon, and ginger, cooked until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

New-england Apple-jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and slice the apples thin or chop them small.

  2. Remove the cores from the apples.

  3. Weigh the prepared apples and use an equal weight of light-brown sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and cold water in a preserving kettle.

  2. Melt the sugar.

  3. Boil the syrup until clear.

  4. Add the apples to the syrup.

Cook and jar

  1. Grate the yellow rind and squeeze the juice of the lemon.

  2. Slice the ginger-root for each pound of apples.

  3. Add the grated rind, lemon juice, and sliced ginger to the kettle.

  4. Boil slowly until the apples look clear. Stir often to prevent burning.

  5. Partly cool the jam in the kettle.

  6. Transfer the jam to glass or earthen jars.

  7. Seal airtight after cooling.

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

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

  2. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Tart, highly flavored apples
Provide the bulk of the jam and its tart, fruity flavor as they break down.
Light-brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens with the fruit, helps set the jam.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens flavor, and its zest adds aromatic oils.
Green ginger-root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that complements the apples.

The step that matters

Stir often while boiling slowly. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the hot bottom of the kettle, which gives a burnt flavor. Frequent stirring spreads heat evenly and lets the jam reach a proper set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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