Why it works: Sugar and pine work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Strawberry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Mash the strawberries in a preserving pan.
Mix the sugar well with the mashed strawberries.
Stir, skim off any foam, and boil for twenty minutes.
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.
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Sugar + pinetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together309 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Strawberries
- Provide the fruit flavour, colour, and the pectin and acid that help the jam set.
- Pounded loaf sugar
- Sweetens the jam and draws water out of the fruit, helping it thicken and preserve.
The step that matters
Boiling and skimming. Boiling must be vigorous enough to drive off water and reach setting point, while skimming removes foam so the jam stays clear and fresh-tasting.
“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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