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Dessert

Medlar Jam

Jam made from medlar fruit simmered, strained, sweetened with sugar, optionally spiced, and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Medlar Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wipe the medlar fruit with a cloth and place in a pan with enough cold water to just cover them.

  2. Simmer on low heat until the fruit bursts, about 30-40 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to remove seeds and pulp.

Make the jam

  1. Add 14 ounces of sugar for every pound of pulp and optional flavorings.

  2. Boil the mixture rapidly for 30-40 minutes, stirring constantly and skimming off any foam.

  3. Transfer to jars and cover with a bladder.

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. Ginger + lemontop 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).

  4. Medlar + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Medlar + gingertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Medlar fruit
Provides the pulp and natural pectin that set the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Rapid boil with constant stirring. Boiling rapidly while stirring keeps the mixture from scorching on the base and drives off water so the sugar and pectin can concentrate and set. Skimming removes foam that would cloud the jam.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (medlar, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against medlar, sugar, lemon. 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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