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Dessert

Marrow Jam

A sweet preserve made from marrow, sugar, lemon, ginger, and chillies.

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 ↓

Marrow Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the marrow, removing all soft parts and seeds.

  2. Cut the marrow into 1-inch squares.

  3. In a bowl, combine the marrow and sugar. Add the juice and thin rind of the lemons. Mix well and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. After 24 hours, add the bruised ginger and chillies in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours, stirring and skimming continually.

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Marrow
Provides the bulk of the jam and its soft, tender body once cooked down.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and draws moisture out of the marrow, helping it set as it thickens.
Lemons
Add acidity and their thin rind adds aroma, balancing the sweetness.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the jam.
Chillies
Add heat to the jam; held in a muslin bag so they can be removed easily.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 hours, stirring and skimming continually. Sugar-rich jam can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred, and skimming removes foam that would otherwise cloud the jam and affect its texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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