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Dessert

Guava Jelly

A preserve made from ripe guavas, lime juice, and sugar, boiled until pulpy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Guava and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Guava Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the guavas

  1. Prepare a large bowl of cold water and mix in the lime juice.

  2. Pare and quarter the guavas, placing each quarter in the lime-water immediately.

  3. Once all guavas are prepared, drain them and place in an enamelled pan, covering with the lime-water.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil until the fruit is pulpy, then drain the liquid without squeezing the fruit.

  2. Weigh the juice and return it to the preserving pan.

  3. Boil again, gradually adding sugar at the rate of 12 ounces per pint of juice.

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. Guava + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Guava + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Guavas
Provide the fruit pulp and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports gelling.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, at this concentration, helps it set firm.

The step that matters

Draining without squeezing. Pressing the pulpy fruit forces cloudy solids and fine pulp into the liquid, making the jelly murky. Letting the juice drain naturally keeps it clear.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (guava, sugar):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against guava, sugar. 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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