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Dessert

Marrow Jam

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Marrow Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the marrow, removing all the seeds.

  2. Layer the sliced marrow and sugar in a bowl, allowing it to sit undisturbed for at least 12 hours.

Cook

  1. After 12 hours, gently boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of ginger for every 4 pounds of marrow, stirring until well mixed.

Store

  1. Transfer the jam into pots or glass jars, cover with parchment paper, and store in a dry place.

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

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

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 and body of the jam once cooked down.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and draws out moisture from the marrow, helping it thicken.
Ground ginger
Adds warm aroma and a gentle spicy flavour.

The step that matters

Gently boiling after the long rest. Sugar pulled moisture out of the marrow during the 12-hour rest. Boiling gently rather than hard lets the syrup reduce and thicken evenly without scorching the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

“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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