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Jams and Jellies

A sweet fruit preserve made by cooking fruit with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Jams and Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit: peel and slice apples, quinces, and pears; stem berries; peel and pit stone fruits like peaches and apricots.

  2. Cook the prepared fruit with enough water to boil until soft.

Make the jam or jelly

  1. Add sugar: use equal parts sugar and fruit or one part sugar to two parts fruit, depending on preference.

  2. For jelly, cook the fruit in a small amount of water, then strain the juice through a bag or press.

  3. Evaporate the juice with added sugar until it reaches a density of 30° to 32° B.

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

Fruit
Provides the main body, flavor and natural pectin that help the jam or jelly set.
Pure cane sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep.
Water
Softens the fruit during cooking and helps extract its juice for jelly.

The step that matters

Evaporate the juice to 30° to 32° B. Setting depends on sugar and pectin reaching the right concentration. Too little cooking leaves a runny product, while overcooking can make it stiff or caramelised and cause it to crystallise or scorch.

“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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