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Curious Marmalade of Eggs, As Made By the Jews

A sweet custard-like marmalade made from egg yolks, sugar, orange‑flower water, almonds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Curious Marmalade of Eggs, As Made By the Jews

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the yolks of 24 eggs for 1 hour.

  2. Clarify 1 pound of sugar and add 4 tablespoons of orange-flower water and 1 ounce of blanched almonds.

  3. Mix well and stir over a very slow charcoal fire.

  4. Keep stirring continuously until it reaches a proper consistency.

Serve

  1. Pour into coffee or custard cups and sprinkle with finely pounded cinnamon.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken as they cook, giving the marmalade its set and rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps give it a smooth, glossy texture.
Blanched and pounded almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour that gives the marmalade substance.

The step that matters

Keep stirring continuously over the slow fire. Egg yolks thicken with gentle heat but can scramble if they get too hot or sit still. Constant stirring over a very low fire spreads the heat evenly so the mixture sets smoothly rather than curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, almond, cinnamon. 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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