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Preserves and Fruit Jellies

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and plum 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 Fruit Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Use a porcelain or brass kettle for making preserves. If using brass, scour it with sand, salt, and vinegar, then scald it.

  2. Prepare a syrup by combining sugar and water in the kettle.

  3. Peel the fruit and place it in cold water to prevent browning until ready to add to the boiling syrup.

  4. Boil the fruit quickly in the syrup for a short time, then remove and let it cool before returning it to the kettle.

  5. Use cut sugar for clear preserves and brown sugar for darker jams and marmalades.

  6. For damsons and blue plums, slit them lengthwise and sun-dry before preserving to make stone removal easier.

  7. Stone cherries before preserving.

  8. Cover the preserves with a piece of paper dipped in brandy to help preserve them.

  9. Store preserves in glass jars with screw tops for easy inspection.

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. Pear + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  3. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

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

  5. Quince + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Swap the quince

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

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Quincethe original

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

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