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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A preserved fruit spread made from cranberries, apples, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick over and wash cranberries.

  2. Wash, pare, core, and slice apples.

Cook and set the jelly

  1. Add water and boil until berries and apples are soft, then strain.

  2. Add sugar to fruit juice and cook until a little dropped on a cold saucer will harden like jelly.

  3. Turn into a mold that has been wet in cold water.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, turn out of mold into serving dish.

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

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

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and the body that gives the jelly its structure.
Apples
Add natural pectin that helps the strained juice set into a jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps the juice set firm.

The step that matters

Cooking the juice with sugar until it sets. Sugar and pectin only gel when the mixture is concentrated enough. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while cooking too long makes it stiff and dull. The cold saucer test checks the set before the jelly is poured into the mold.

“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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