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Dessert

Medlar Jelly

A preserve made from ripe medlars, sugar, allspice, and water, boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and allspice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,938 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Medlar Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Put ripe medlars in a preserving pan and cover with cold water.

  2. Boil until soft.

  3. Pass the cooked medlars through a fine sieve to extract the pulp.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of pulp, add 1 pound of coarsely-crushed loaf sugar and ½ teaspoon of allspice.

  2. Combine the pulp and sugar in the preserving pan and boil gently for 30 minutes, stirring and skimming regularly.

  3. Pour the jelly into jars, let it cool, then cover with brandied paper and parchment, and tie down.

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. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

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

  2. Medlar + allspicetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Medlar + sugartop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe medlars
Provide the fruit pulp that sets into the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pulp and helps it set into a firm jelly when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 30 minutes while stirring and skimming. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a set point without scorching. Gentle boiling avoids burning the sugar, while stirring prevents sticking at the base of the pan and skimming removes foam so the jelly stays clear.

Swap the medlar

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Medlarthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice. 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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