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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A fruit jelly 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

  1. Cover cranberries with water.

  2. Peel and slice the apples, then add them to the cranberries.

  3. Boil the mixture and strain it through a colander.

Make the jelly

  1. Add 1 cup of sugar to the juice and boil again until it jellies.

  2. Pour the jelly into a mold.

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 natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Apples
Add natural pectin and body to help the jelly firm up.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart juice and helps the jelly set when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil again until it jellies. Sugar and pectin must reach a high enough concentration to set. Undercooking leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or sugary.

“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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