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Dessert

Marmalade From Mixicd Fruits

A preserve made by stewing plums, pears, apples, and cherries with sugar until stiff.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Marmalade From Mixicd Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, core, and remove the pits from the fruits.

  2. Stew the fruits together until perfectly tender, using as little water as possible.

  3. Cook slowly in an earthen or porcelain kettle.

  4. Rub the cooked fruit through a sieve.

Make the marmalade

  1. Add ½ pound of sugar for every pound of pulp.

  2. Boil steadily until quite stiff, stirring to prevent scorching.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly until it hardens partially.

Shape and serve

  1. Cut into diamond shapes, 1 to 2 inches long, and set aside for dessert.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 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).

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

Plums
Add fruit body, tartness and pectin-rich pulp that helps the marmalade set.
Pears
Contribute mild sweetness and a soft pulp that thickens the mixture as it cooks.
Apples
Supply natural pectin and body, helping the marmalade become firm when cooled.
Cherries
Add tart flavor and color to the pulp.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, with boiling, helps the pulp thicken and set into a stiff mass.

The step that matters

Boil steadily until quite stiff, stirring to prevent scorching. Sugar and fruit pectin set only at high concentration, so the mixture must cook long enough to thicken. Constant stirring prevents sugars from scorching on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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