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Dessert

Mock Ginger, or Vegetable Marrow Jam

A jam made from vegetable marrow, ginger, sugar, lemon, cayenne, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Ginger, or Vegetable Marrow Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrow

  1. Peel the marrow.

  2. Cut the marrow into 1-inch dice.

  3. Make a syrup with 2 lbs of brown sugar and 5 pints of water.

  4. Soak the diced marrow in the syrup for 2 days.

  5. Strain the marrow from the syrup.

Make the jam

  1. Prepare a second syrup with 1 lb of loaf sugar, lemon juice and rind, cayenne, and bruised ginger for each pound of marrow.

  2. Add the strained marrow to the second syrup.

  3. Heat over a clear fire until it begins to clear.

  4. Add a liqueur glass of brandy.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. 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

Vegetable marrow (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the jam and absorbs the sugar syrup as it softens.
Brown cane sugar
Sweetens the marrow and draws syrup into it during the two-day soak.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the second syrup thicken as the jam cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the sweetness.
Ginger
Adds aroma and a warm, spicy flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heating until the marrow begins to clear. Heating too briefly leaves the marrow opaque and under-candied, while overheating can scorch the sugar or break the pieces down. Watching for clearing shows the sugar has penetrated the marrow.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, pepper, brandy. 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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