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Preserve

Jim Jam

A spiced preserve of crab apples, raisins and oranges, cooked with sugar and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jim Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Spice and sweeten

  1. Put spices in a bag, add 1 cup of water and the vinegar, and boil for a few minutes.

  2. Add sugar and boil for 20 minutes.

Add fruit and finish

  1. Add crab-apples, oranges, and raisins, and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove spices and seal the mixture.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab-apples
Their natural pectin and tartness help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set and keeps it preserved.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the jam.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports pectin setting.
Oranges
Add acidity, pectin from the pulp, and bright citrus flavor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the fruit for 30 minutes. Fruit pectin needs enough heat, sugar and acid to gel properly. Cooking too briefly leaves the jam runny, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, apple, vinegar, raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, apple, vinegar, raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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