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Apple Marmalade

A preserved apple spread made by cooking apples with sugar and lemon, then canning in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in a saucepan with enough water to prevent burning until tender.

  3. Pass the cooked apples through a sieve.

Make the marmalade

  1. For each pound of pulp and juice, add ¾ pound of white sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Cook and stir until the mixture coats the spoon and drops from it in beads.

Bottle and set

  1. Store in bottles with strings attached to the necks.

  2. Stand the bottles upright on a trivet in a deep saucepan and fill with cold water to the height of the bottles.

  3. Place over moderate heat and boil for 10 to 12 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool in the water.

  5. Once cool, cut the strings and lay the bottles flat in a very cool 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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which gives the marmalade its body once cooked and sieved.
White sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, as it cooks down, thickens it to a spreadable set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps the mixture set.

The step that matters

Cook and stir until the mixture coats the spoon. Sugar and fruit pectin set only when enough water has evaporated and the sugar concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves a runny product, while overcooking can make it stiff and sugary.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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