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Strawberry Conserve

A preserve made from ripe strawberries, raisins, orange and lemon pulp, walnuts, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a preserving kettle.

  2. Cook slowly until a thick syrup forms, about 30 minutes, skimming as necessary.

  3. Pour into tumblers and seal with paraffin like jelly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens, helps preserve the fruit.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor against the soft fruit.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and acidity that balance the sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sugar.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to thickness. Sugar concentrates as the mixture simmers and thickens into syrup, which helps preserve the fruit. Cooking too long or too hot can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor, so the cook should watch closely and skim foam as it cooks.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, orange, lemon, 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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