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Dessert

Jams and Jellies

A preserved fruit spread made by cooking fruit with sugar and water, then cooling.

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 ↓

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.

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

Add sugar and cook

  1. Add sugar: use equal parts sugar and fruit or one part sugar to two parts fruit.

  2. For jelly, transfer cooked fruit to a bag or press to extract juice.

  3. Evaporate the juice with sugar until it reaches a density of 30° to 32° B6.

Finish

  1. Pour the hot mixture into tumblers for cooling.

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 body, flavor and natural pectin that help the mixture set.
Pure cane sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken and set as it cooks down.
Water
Helps the fruit soften during the initial cooking.

The step that matters

Evaporate the juice with sugar to 30° to 32° B6. Cooking must reach the right concentration for the mixture to set. Too little cooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

“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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