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Dessert

Egg Marmalade

Egg marmalade is a sweet preserve made from sugar, water, almonds, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Egg Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and heat until thick syrup.

Build the marmalade

  1. Add the pounded almonds to the syrup and let it cool.

  2. Gently stir in the beaten egg yolks that have been passed through a sieve.

  3. Stir continuously in the same direction to mix well.

  4. Place the mixture over low heat and stir constantly until it thickens to prevent burning.

  5. If desired, add vanilla for flavor.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 and set the marmalade as they cook, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when heated with water, forms the thick syrup base.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and body to the mixture once pounded into the syrup.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scorch if overheated. Gentle, constant stirring over low heat spreads the heat evenly and lets the yolks thicken smoothly.

“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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