Name: Jams or Jellies
Ingredients: Fruit pulp or juice (apples, quinces, pears, berries, peaches, apricots); Pure cane sugar; Water; Elutriated chalk (optional)

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 or Jellies

Ingredients

Fruit pulp or juice (apples, quinces, pears, berries, peaches, apricots)
Pure cane sugar
Water
Elutriated chalk (optional)

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Prepare the fruit by peeling, coring, and slicing as needed.
Cook the prepared fruit with enough water to boil until soft.

Make the jam

Add sugar in a ratio of 1:1 or 1:2 (sugar to fruit) based on preference.
For jelly, strain the cooked fruit through a bag or press to extract juice.
Evaporate the juice with sugar until it reaches a density of 30° to 32° B.

Store

Pour the hot mixture into tumblers for cooling and storage.

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.

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 bulk, flavour and natural pectin that lets the mixture set.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Evaporating the juice with sugar to 30° to 32° B. Cooking must reach the target density; too little cooking leaves the jam runny and it may spoil, while overcooking makes it stiff and can scorch the sugar. Sugar and pectin set as water evaporates and the concentration rises.

“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.