Name: Preserves and Marmalades
Ingredients: 1.5 pounds sugar; 1 pound water; fruit of choice (e.g., cherries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, strawberries, whortleberries, pie plant, pears, peaches, pineapples, crab apples, sour apples, currants, wild grapes, tomatoes)

Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Preserves and Marmalades

Ingredients

1.5 pounds sugar
1 pound water
fruit of choice (e.g., cherries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, strawberries, whortleberries, pie plant, pears, peaches, pineapples, crab apples, sour apples, currants, wild grapes, tomatoes)

Directions

Make a syrup by combining 1.5 pounds of sugar with 1 pound of water.
For each type of fruit, boil according to the following times: cherries (5 minutes), raspberries (6 minutes), blackberries (6 minutes), plums (10 minutes), strawberries (8 minutes), whortleberries (5 minutes), pie plant (10 minutes), small sour pears (30 minutes), Bartlett pears (20 minutes), peaches (halves for 8 minutes, whole for 15 minutes), pineapples (sliced ½ inch thick for 15 minutes), crab apples (25 minutes), sour apples (quartered for 10 minutes), ripe currants (6 minutes), wild grapes (10 minutes), tomatoes (20 minutes).

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.

Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together649 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + peachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together114 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, plum, pear, peach, pineapple, crab, apple):

Apricotfits better
Quincefits better
Vanillafits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, plum, pear, peach, pineapple, crab, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.